Höst Andrea K.

The Touchstone Trilogy

Author’s Note

The Touchstone Trilogy is a diary in three parts, commencing in Stray, continued in Lab Rat One, and concluded in Caszandra.

A glossary of terms and phrases, and a character list, have been included at the end of the volume.

Stray

Description

On her last day of high school, Cassandra Devlin walked out of exams and into a forest. Surrounded by the wrong sort of trees, and animals never featured in any nature documentary, Cass is only sure of one thing: alone, she will be lucky to survive.

The sprawl of abandoned blockish buildings Cass discovers offers her only more puzzles. Where are the people? What is the intoxicating mist which drifts off the buildings in the moonlight? And why does she feel like she’s being watched?

Increasingly unnerved, Cass is overjoyed at the arrival of the formidable Setari. Whisked to a world as technologically advanced as the first was primitive, where nanotech computers are grown inside people’s skulls, and few have any interest in venturing outside the enormous whitestone cities, Cass finds herself processed as a stray, a refugee displaced by the gates torn between worlds. Struggling with an unfamiliar language and culture, she must adapt to virtual classrooms, friends who can teleport, and the ingrained attitude that strays are backward and slow.

Can Cass ever find her way home? And after the people of her new world discover her unexpected value, will they be willing to let her leave?

November

Friday, November 16

WTF?

Where the FUCK am I????

Writing that down won’t give me an answer, but at least there’ll be a record of what happened. Not that I know what happened. I only know what happened to me – and, yeah, I’m not making much sense.

My name is Cassandra Eloise Devlin. Cass for short. Never Cassie.

I was walking home from school. I turned a corner, and I was here. No flashing lights, no warning, no zoomy wormhole: nothing but me one minute in Sydney and the next here.

Here is…here is the problem. It’s definitely not Sydney. I don’t think it’s Australia, either, unless it’s Tasmania. But I’m sure they’d have gum trees in Tasmania, and that’s the thing. The trees are all wrong. Hills covered in trees, too many to describe but none of them remotely like Eucalypt. The birds sound wrong too.

No signal on my mobile. I can’t spot any buildings or power lines. No planes have flown over. I haven’t been able to see anything at any distance, so I’m trying to get out of these trees, or at least to a lookout. I’ve been walking for maybe half an hour. My watch says it’s 3.30 but the sky thinks it’s later. I’ve found a thread of a track and I’m going to follow it.

I need new feet

Trees, trees, and, oh look, more trees. Green hills in every direction, severely lacking in distinctive landmarks.

All those stories where people navigate by the sun don’t take into account crazy, crisscrossing animal tracks being the easiest way to get through all the trees and bushes. I wandered around until I found an overhang of rock, and decided to collapse for the night.

Still no signal on my mobile.

My watch says 6pm. It should be full light, but the sun’s fading fast, so I’m not even in the same time zone. An hour or two ahead would put me where? New Zealand? How far ahead is New Zealand?

Of course, having been raised on a diet of Doctor Who, Buffy and Stargate, I’ve no need to stop at New Zealand. I could be in an alternate Australia, any part of the planet at any time, or a different world entirely. Another planet. Or in a mental asylum, strapped in a straight jacket, giggling.

Since I really don’t like that last option, I’m concentrating on gathering details. I was hoping to try and spot the Southern Cross when the sun went down, but it’s cloudy. And cool: colder than it should be for nearly Summer. So I’m in a different time zone, in a different climate or possibly at a different time of year.

Today was the last day of exams. History. We were going to go out to dinner to celebrate. Mum will be so worried. Will she have called the police? What will I say, if I get back? No-one will believe I just walked to another…somewhere.

There was a stream a while back, so I’m not dying of thirst, and I filled up the Fanta bottle left over from lunch. The water was probably full of bugs and I’ll end up sick, but I was so thirsty and it’s not like I’m a smoker conveniently carrying a cigarette lighter so I could make a fire and boil drinking water.

A fire would be damn nice.

A quick catalogue of my wilderness survival gear:

- School uniform: blouse, skirt, blazer, stupidtie, socks, shoes, underpants, bra.

- Ponytail band and butterfly hair clip.

- Backpack.

- Pencil Case of Doom, chock-full of writey stuff.

- 30cm ruler

- Modern history notes – useless (or toilet paper).

- Jenna’s birthday present, a blank-paged book with a blue and green patterned cover, which I’m writing in. I was going to give it to her this morning, but she was sick again and didn’t come to the exam.

- Little packet of tissues (definitely toilet paper).

- Mobile – close to useless, especially once the battery runs out.

- Wallet – about $20, mostly in coins, and other bits of paper and plastic.

- 600 ml Fanta bottle, full of suspect water.

- Half a forgotten muesli bar, going musty in the bottom of my bag! Yay! (Gone now.)

No knives, no matches, no blanket. No shoes good for walking for miles. This isn’t fun. It isn’t exciting. I walked into adventure and adventure has given me blisters. I have to try and go to sleep sitting in the dirt in a forest full of things making noises, and I don’t know where I am, I don’t know why I’m here, and…I don’t want to think about it.

Saturday, November 17

SO hungry

How do you tell what’s poisonous? Now that would have been a useful thing to learn at school. I’ve found a couple of trees covered in fruit which look like red pears, and I don’t know if eating them will make me drop dead.

The birds seem to like them, anyway. It was hard to find any that hadn’t been pecked to death. So here goes…

Floury, but it’s been a few minutes and I don’t feel any odder than I was before. I’ve only eaten one, and I’m going to wait a while before eating any more in case there’s a delayed effect. I’ll take the least pecked with me, since they might be the only thing I can find that’s edible.

Last night was a black eternity. I don’t feel like I really slept, just dozed, constantly starting awake. I’m heading in the direction the sun rose because it looks flatter that way. No mobile signal. No buildings, powerlines, planes, etc, etc.

I’ve never walked so much in my life.

Camp

It’s an hour or two before sunset, but I’ve reached a clearing with a stream and stopped to sit with my feet in the water.

It looks like there might have been a fire here a few years ago: the entire slope of this hill is covered in grass and burnt-out trees. The clearing’s given me my best view yet of Planet Endless Green Carpet. It’s all so empty and untouched. I’m still not 100% certain whether this is or isn’t Earth. I’ve scared off a few animals walking along, but the only one I caught a good look at was a deer, which doesn’t exactly narrow things down continent-wise, and I guess there could be deer on other planets.

There’s a curving glint of water down below which I’m hoping is a river. I mightn’t be able to see any fields or signs of settlement nearby, but I figure if I follow a river I’ll find a lake or the ocean and then – I don’t know.

My school uniform is nothing but sweat and itches, so if ever a rescue plane wanted to fly over, I’m about to wash everything while the sun’s still strong. Never thought to pack a spare pair of undies when getting ready for the exam. There’s no cloud today, so at least I can hope to try some star-spotting tonight. Astronomy’s not my thing, but the Southern Cross is the easiest constellation in the world – or off it! Too much cloud last night to even see if there’s a moon.

Knowing whether this is Earth is really important. If it’s Earth, then I might be able to recognise edible fruits and vegetables. And it might be MY Earth. Not another time, or an alternate or whatever. I could just be in somewhere really unpopulated and foresty, and that would mean home is still there waiting for me.

There are no really obvious clues so far. Gravity seems the same, the sun looks the same, the sky is blue, the leaves are green. If I see something which looks totally not from my Earth, I’ll have to face not being able to walk back home. Even without being sure, once I follow that river I’m going to have to think about something other than going forward. But until then, just to keep it all in steps that don’t overwhelm me, the plan is to get to the river, to follow the river.

Sunday, November 18

Riverward

I’m no good at estimating how far I can walk in a day. I might get to the river today. I’m going very slow because of my feet, plus overall not feeling well. The nights aren’t impossibly cold, and I made a nest in the grass which was more or less comfortable, but I woke up covered in dew, and my throat’s sore. I’m out of tissues for toilet paper, too. History notes just aren’t…up to scratch.

I cut my tie into two pieces and have padded my shoes as best I can. Awkward bandages. Paper scissors don’t cut cloth well, but I had to wonder what I would have done if they hadn’t been in my pencil case. The things I have with me are irreplaceable.

Better living through bare feet

So here’s the plan. Barefoot unless the ground is really rough, and only then the torture devices. My feet are quickly collecting bruises, but I just couldn’t go on in my black leather school shoes. My heels are a raw, bleeding mess.

I spotted a tree critter just now, and I’m waiting for it to come out again while wondering if I’m capable of killing animals for food. Food is my biggest issue, since I’ve finished the last of the red pears. They’re not the only fruit I’ve found – there’s lots of green berries, for instance, but they’re so sour I think they’re not ripe. I picked a bunch of tiny, thumb-sized apples, but they made my mouth go numb.

- Red Pears – good.

- Thumb Apples – bad.

- Green Tearberries – sour/not ripe.

I’ve been puzzling over catching fish, trying to remember ways that don’t involve nets or fishing line. Pears won’t last forever. If I’m heading for Winter I’m in such deep shit.

Progress-wise, I’m nearer the river, but have lost sight of it because I’m not up top of a good slope. I’m just aiming in the general direction, which is a lot easier in the afternoon when the sun drops and the shadows point the way. I’m not near anything resembling a good camp – just sitting down for a while – and I need to find water as well. One Fanta bottle doesn’t carry nearly enough.

Back in the World

So tonight’s the night of the Schoolies' Cruise, and I’m supposed to be celebrating the end of high school. We didn’t want to fight the hordes at the beaches, let alone go up to the Gold Coast to be chased by Toolies, so about a hundred of us from Agowla and the Boy’s Tech were going on the Harbour. Her Mightiness (Helen Middledell, unofficial Queen of Agowla High School) was the cruise driving force and had all the say on the guest list, but since HM started her thing with Todd Hunter she’s been almost human, and didn’t try to keep everything to some sort of In crowd.

I was really looking forward to the cruise. I had a great dress, blue and silver and not frilly or little girl. Alyssa’s dad was going to drive us in, so we wouldn’t have to ride the train, and we had taxi fare home. There was going to be a band, and the way HM was acting, it wasn’t going to be Awful Cover Band #36.

Schoolies is a big thing. Not everyone’s planning on uni. Not everyone will get in, and not everyone will go to the same uni even if they do. The cruise was going to be the last time most of us would see each other. Nick was going to be there. I hate that I’m missing it. I hate that my unexcellent adventure is probably spoiling it for Alyssa and Nick as well.

I might never see them again. I don’t just mean Alyssa or Nick. Or Mum. I mean anyone. Anyone. Ever.

Monday, November 19

Nice place for a holiday

If there was a hotel and people and a way to get back home, I’d probably like it here. It’s the sort of place which would be wall-to-wall tourists if it was Earth.

The animal I saw today definitely pushes me toward the not-Earth conclusion. It was pale gold, darkening to reddish along its back and tail and the top of its head. And bouncy. Not like a kangaroo, but like a jumpy lamb or a startled cat. It came down out of its tree and chased insects through the leaves. It has longish legs which look like they should be awkward, but aren’t. I’m calling it a tree fox, and even if it hadn’t been impossibly cute I don’t think I could have brought myself to try and kill it.

Walking for forever

Three days. Three and a bit days. I’m surprised I haven’t fallen apart by now. And I’ve had it easy, really. If I’d found myself in a desert I’d be dead. Even the bush just west of Sydney would be rough in comparison. But here there’s lots of water, and the days aren’t nearly as hot as Australia in November, though still enough to give me sunburn. I’m trying to make myself a hat.

I found another red pear tree, but most of the fruit had been eaten, or was full of worms. Eating nothing but pears for three days running is NOT good for digestion, plus my throat has stayed scratchy. My horrible blisters are drying out, but it’s hard to keep them from becoming dirty, and they’re already infected. My feet are holding up otherwise. Sore and bruised, but nothing like so painful as it was wearing my shoes. A bunch of insect bites, too, but nothing fatal, obviously.

I think I’m getting near the river. I’m a lot lower than I was, and the trees are spread out more. Most are a rough black bark, with branches which start spreading out low to the ground. I could probably climb halfway up one easy enough, but the high parts are thin and twiggy, making them not useful lookout points. If I see a wolf I’ll climb one. And probably find that it’s a tree wolf.

If there were no predators on this world, the deer and tree foxes wouldn’t run away from me. That makes sense, doesn’t it? I’ve got to start thinking about trying to make a fire, or a weapon. How to do that with the contents of my pencil case, and a world of rocks and twigs is the problem. I’d make a terrible cavewoman.

Tuesday, November 20

Definitely not Earth

Guess how I know this isn’t Earth? Not animals I can’t quite identify. Not the stars, which, while Southern Cross-less haven’t exactly stood up and looked wrong. Not freaky alien civilisations. No, my watch told me. Each day the sun’s set a quarter hour or so later. So this is a world which is really like Earth, but not it at all. Not even an alternate Earth, unless it’s one which has a slightly longer day for some odd reason.

I’ll have to think up a name.

A whole new world. Other planets, habitable planets, actually exist. There could be anything, anything at all out there. I’m trying to be excited about it, to appreciate what an amazing experience this is. But my feet hurt, and I’m hungry.

As well as discovering a planet, this has been a big day for Survivor Cass. I reached the river at last, at about mid-morning. Since my water bottle was empty, it was great to get to it, and I jumped straight in before the idea of piranhas occurred to me. I seriously needed the bath, though. The river bottom is all small rocks and grit, and the water’s very clear at the shallow parts. It’s wide, but I’ve already found a spot where I could wade across. The water is very sweet, no hint of salt, and so long as I follow the river I won’t have any more thirsty days (or get so manky!).

I finished my hat while I was drying off. A frame of twigs woven together with grass, and not exactly comfortable, but it does shade my face. Every so often I pull some more long grass to weave into it, and tighten everything up. I’ve been plaiting skinny grass stalks together to get something resembling twine, and then I’ll reinforce it all again. My hat might look like the makings of a campfire, but it’s the first thing I’ve made since woodwork in grade eight, and better than nothing.

During the day I’ve kept my eye out for:

- Anything edible.

- Rocks that look like flint. Not that I know what flint looks like. Most of the rock here is grey, with some yellow. No really red earth like you’d get in Aus.

- Clay. This involves squeezing any mud I find. Extremely silly.

- Friendly alien civilisations. I could really do with one of these.

It’s also been a big day for animals. Plenty of deer, and what I think was an elk, but very big. And grey terrier-sized dogs that run around in groups of three or four. They followed me for a while, and I was a bit worried, but not really because I could send one flying with a good kick, or climb a tree if they came after me. Mid-afternoon I saw paw prints of something larger and spent ages looking for a good place to spend the night. There just doesn’t seem to be anywhere safe. Maybe I can weave a hammock? The best I can do is not sleep anywhere close to the river. If all the animals go down there to drink, I don’t want to be the after-drink snack.

So new animals today:

- Mondo Elk.

- Grey Terriers.

- Mr Paws.

I’m not even going to start listing the birds, because there’s so many. It was a great day for fruit, too. Red pears, berries everywhere, and what I hope are edible nuts. I haven’t eaten anything but the pears yet because I’m going to have to be systematic about experimental eating so I know exactly what fatally poisons me. Throat still sore, but my nose isn’t blocked. It’s sleeping out in the dew which is doing it.

Wednesday, November 21

Handicrafts and cats

Walking along the river is easier than the hills. There’s still plenty of ups and downs and rough patches, since someone forgot to install a boardwalk, but overall not too bad.

The big event of the day was the cat. Mr Paws indeed. It was on the other side of the river, which might be the only reason I get to sit around writing this. It wasn’t as big as a lion, was more like a leopard, except not spotty. With a golden body and darker brown ears, face and legs, it reminded me of a miscoloured Siamese cat. It watched me across the river, then flowed up the nearest tree and was gone – probably to look for a bridge. I dubbed it Ming Cat and I’m going to have nightmares about it tonight. On a less I’m-going-to-die front, there were also otters in the river. Or something like otters. I haven’t seen them clearly enough to know whether they’re different enough from otters to need their own name.

All the berries I’ve found continue to be sour, but the nuts were great. Fiddly to get out of their shells, which are like a harder walnut. They taste more like cashews, and would be perfect if I could figure out how to roast and salt them. I’m calling them washews. I wish I’d brought more with me, and if I spot another tree I’m going to harvest as many as possible, since they’re light and they’ll keep.

Today’s home economics project was to grab long stalks of grass and long flat leaves to twist into cords, or to try and weave with. Just sampling which plants work best and don’t hurt my hands.

After the Ming Cat, I gave up on weaving for a while and found myself a Big Stick. Then I swapped it for a long, straight(ish) stick. When I’m resting, I rub one end on the nearest rock, trying to make a point. I’m not really pretending to myself that I’d be able to fight Mr Paws off, but I can at least wave it about and look fierce.

Navel Gazing

I’ve never been the type to keep a diary, so this pile of words is strange to look back over. The first thing which leaps out is how calm I sound. That’s a big bluff. I just haven’t written down all the shouting and crying I’ve done. I don’t want to write pages about how it feels to wake in the middle of the night, stiff and cold in my grassy nest, to listen to SOMETHING moving around in the dark and hope that if it bites I die quick. Every day, this could be the last thing I write, and no-one would know.

So I don’t write too much about the crying and maybe dying. I think about it enough, listening in the dark. During the day, Survivor Cass keeps busy with practicalities because I hate the idea that the whole of my future might be a diary which one day stops.

Thursday, November 22

Life without entertainment

I’ve been camping a bunch of times with my family, and once on a school camp which of course was wall to wall activities. Even then I brought along half a shelf of books to get me by. Borrowed Mum’s iPod. Recorded all the TV shows I was missing, and straight on the comp as soon as we were back to catch up on message boards and all my web comics. I’m the kind of person who watches TV while checking FaceBook, and reads whether I’m having breakfast, or on the bus, or in the loo.

I don’t get to find out how anything ends. I don’t get to see the next episode, read the next volume, or pick through the latest pile of books Mum brings home to find something new to love. I keep thinking about the book I left sitting face-down on my bed. I’d just reached a scene where the characters were being attacked by these big fleshy bugs which lay eggs in people to make more bugs, but then Mum yelled that I had get in the car RIGHT NOW if I wanted a lift, and now that book is stuck in my head with these bugs chasing people in the rain, and no way to know who gets stung.

Exams are practically the only time I don’t bring a novel to school. Theoretically only taking my notes means I’ll read them while I’m waiting outside the exam room. Any other day and I would have at least had one book to read and re-read.

So, here I am, Survivor Cass, boldly exploring an alien world. And in between crying, whining and trembling, I’m BORED OUT OF MY MIND.

No remarkable developments today. I’ve been working on trying to weave bamboo-ish leaves into a mat/blanket/Superman cape. I’m not too bad with the basic structure, but still don’t have the slightest idea how to do the edges. I’ve no needles and no thread. I’m thinking of spending tomorrow not walking, to devote some daylight time to dive-bombing fish and trying to light a fire – something I haven’t even tried because reality TV shows have taught me that it’s super-hard.

If I catch a fish (my crooked-ass spear has been decidedly ineffective) then maybe I can make the bones into needles. Thread will be hardest – really bad twine I can do, but I don’t see how to make thread. I need a horse willing to let me cut off its tail. There’s all sorts of things I’m scheming about making, but the bamboo leaf mats are priority number one. Big, light mats I can roll up and take with me, which I can sit and sleep on. One I can use to keep the dew off me, and shut away the night.

Friday, November 23

Treed

The Grey Terriers turned up in numbers. Before today I’ve only seen them in groups of three or four, but about twenty started following me this morning. I climbed a tree. I’m not sure if they’re at all likely to attack me – it’s not like they’re all gathered around the base of the tree jumping up at me. But every so often they drift back past the tree, and there always seems to be one hanging about watching.

Don’t know how long I’ll be stuck up here, but I do have food and water – and a sore ass from sitting on this rough bark!

One week

It’s been a lifetime. The past couple of days I’ve been feeling so…annoyed. I mean, if I was going to be whisked off to spend the rest of my life stumbling around the wilderness, couldn’t it have happened BEFORE the exams? Or at least after the Schoolies cruise? I don’t even get to find out how I did. The whole HSC thing seems pretty minor now. I was going to do an Arts degree while making up my mind where to end up, since there’s nothing out there that sounds like an interesting way to earn a living. That I can do, anyway.

The Grey Terriers went away eventually. I waited a long time, not sure it was safe, and saw a new animal as my reward. It must have been hidden in a burrow. It was only the size of a kitten – for all I know it was just a baby, though I didn’t see any adults – and was like the tree fox, except smaller with shorter legs and more a creamy manila folder colour with black markings. It was so cute. It leaped about, exploring under the leaves and darting and rushing and then freezing and listening hard and then scurrying back under the tree roots where it lives.

I’m calling it a pippin, and it cheered me up for a while.

The rest of the day was more walking, and finding a rash all over my legs and on my arms. Just pinpoints, but not comfortable. And now I’m sitting here on a hill well away from the river, watching the moon rise. It’s the first time it’s come up, and if it had bothered to show itself before I would have known straight away that this isn’t Earth. It’s big, and blueish, and there’s a huge scar almost like a bullet hole, or an odd meteor crater, with lines radiating out from it. It’s about two-thirds full, and it looks like it’ll make the night a bright one. Weird, beautiful. Mum would love it.

Saturday, November 24

I am not my Mother

But sometimes I wish I was.

There was a patch where I hated Mum. My first year of high school, I went to St Mary’s. Great school, I really liked it, and April Stevenson was in my class. She was just…there’s a certain sort of person who is like a little walking sun. No party feels like it starts until they get there, because they’re just so alive. April was full of great stories and ideas and could do anything she set out to. Everyone gravitated to her, like they do with HM at my current school, but April was straightforward nice as well, and a reader, so we were always chatting in the library.

April thought science fiction and fantasy was kid’s stuff. She wasn’t nasty about it, but she couldn’t understand why anyone over ten would read it. So I peeled the fairy stickers off my folders and read other books. She invited me over to her house a few times, and everything was so sophisticated and Mrs Stevenson was like someone off TV. Then we had a parents' day at school and Mum shows up in one of her Celtic dragon t-shirts. She didn’t say anything rude, and chatted away with other parents, but I hated her for that shirt.

I said a few things to Mum that year that I can never take back. About how embarrassed she made me. How I was surprised Dad had stuck around as long as he did. Mum doesn’t like arguments. She just took me out of St Mary’s at the end of the term, and pretty much ignored everything I said for about six months.

Before that I used to think she was the best Mum in the world. When she’s not reading she makes jewellery, and eerie but cool little dolls, and sells them online. She plays computer games. She’s really bad at racing games, but she’ll even play them when Jules bugs her enough. She tries to explain when she wants us to do stuff, and she cares more about what’s right than what’s in. It’s only over the last couple of years that I realised that she wasn’t that embarrassing really. And I never got around to telling her that.

I can’t imagine what she’s doing now. I wish there was some way to at least let her know I’m alive. That no nasty old man grabbed me and did things to me. The worst part about all this is that every day I’m complaining about being Survivor Cass is a day she doesn’t, can’t, will never know.

Sunday, November 25

One long river

I’ve been following the river in a loop around the base of a big hill, which is easier than trying a straight line over the top since I get lost so easily once I’m under cover of the trees. The river is narrower and faster than I’ve seen previously – I’d only swim across it at this point if I absolutely had to – but it’s still clear without any hint of salt or tides to suggest that I’m nearing the ocean.

The soles of my feet are black, even after I wash them, and have collected plenty of bruises and tiny cuts, but there’s no way I’m putting my shoes on until the sores made by my blisters are better. The rash on my arms and legs went away quickly though. I think it was the tree which caused it. I’ve lost weight: my skirt keeps slipping down on my hips. I’ve never been the thinnest girl, though not really fat either, and I wouldn’t mind a mirror to see what I look like. Not that I’d pass up a milkshake.

Foliage overload

Another reason I’m glad to stick to the river is it offers a break from the trees. The undergrowth isn’t too bad here, but between the trees and bushes it still feels very closed in. Even when I’m up on a hill, I rarely see any distance at all, and big clearings only happen once in a while. When the river’s running straight I at least get a reasonable glimpse of what’s ahead, but I want a better idea of where I am and whether there’s anything out there I should head for.

Which comes down to climbing trees. The problem is, if I fall, if I break a leg or an arm, I’m going to have to fix it. Any accident, no matter how minor, could be fatal. Even the little scratches could get infected, and I don’t have the least idea how to make antiseptic, any more than I can figure out where soap comes from.

Anyway, I’ve found a good tree. It’s a kind of pine, I guess. One of the really straight ones anyway, basically a pole with lots of branches sticking out, and if I can use the nearest rock to haul myself to the lowest branch, I should be able to climb up far further than I can on the trees which have lots of low, dividing branches. Time to give it a shot.

View

Okay, just a few scrapes and itches for that effort. And nothing much else. I could see a fair way, but it was all what I already knew – I’m in a lot of low hills covered by trees, and a river is winding through it. Still no sign of farmland or buildings, let alone power lines. I think maybe there’s an edge of water ahead. It could just be the river widening again and turning back, but it looked flatter in that direction.

Monday, November 26

Bleaurgh

Very sick. I tried a new fruit, a kind of orange grape (granges). Only ate one, and have been sicking up all afternoon, with the added joy of the runs. I think I’ll be okay, but life without toilet paper truly sucks.

Tuesday, November 27

Bad Night

I’ve made two really large (and very fraying) mats of bamboo leaves now. They’re not too hard to carry, rolled up and tied to the back of my backpack. At night I lie on one and completely under the other. It keeps a lot of the dew off, and might even help if it rained: it hasn’t rained at all yet, though it’s overcast a lot. Even though the mat’s paper-thin, it makes me feel safer to be under something.

Last night something walked right up to me, crunching a corner of my mat. I was feeling so awful anyway, and inside I just shrivelled, all while I held my breath and tried to be anything but a big Cass sandwich. For all I know it was a cow, more interested in my mats than me. It was big, heavy. I could hear it breathing, and the tiny sounds it made as it turned its head, right over mine.

And then it left.

I’ve spent most of today on a rock in the middle of the river, making myself feel warm and safe, and drinking gallons of water. I needed the recovery time from yesterday’s food experiment, but it’s not bad fruit that makes me stand hunched, cringing from something I didn’t even see.

I’ll sleep here tonight. I need to. But I know there’s no choice but to go on.

Mats

I’ve been fiddling with my mats, tightening them up again, and wondering how I could make a needle and thread to sew edges. I’d realised I could bend the ends back and thread them through the checkerboard of weave, which keeps them firmer, but mat maintenance is a big part of my day.

My scissors are already showing signs of wear. The kind of paper scissors which fit into pencil cases, even the Pencil Case of Doom, aren’t large or strong enough to pretend to be a knife or half the things I’ve been trying to use them for. The pencil sharpener also has a tiny blade in it, but I’m leaving that alone for the moment, and trying to reserve my scissors for things I can’t figure out any other way to cut. Perhaps I’ll make another attempt at whacking a stone knife out of the rocks.

Wednesday, November 28

Big Wet

There definitely is an ocean or a lake ahead. I keep seeing the light reflecting from the water, though it’s still too far ahead for more. Going to push hard this afternoon, to see how far I can get.

Nature abhors a square

At least, I can’t think of any naturally forming squares, except for the occasional odd-shaped rock.

There’s a big patch of water ahead. Ocean or a lake, not sure yet. The river’s still fresh, without any hint of salt. And to the right, far along the shore, are white, square things. Buildings.

No sign of smoke or power lines or roads or anything but a few whitish squares among the greenery. But this changes so much. Someone made those squares, and although they could be hostile or gecko-men or whatever, it means I’m not the only intelligent person on the planet.

I can barely sit here writing this. I want to run all the way there, I want to scream for help, I want to see a plane fly over, I want it all at once.

I think I MIGHT get there by tomorrow afternoon. I’m definitely going to push as hard as I can, the rest of today and tomorrow.

Thursday, November 29

Water Walk

I’m nearly at the buildings, and should reach them in plenty of time before sunset, though I’ve yet to decide whether that’s a good idea or not.

The lake is enormous. I seem to be walking along an outflung arm of it, and can see a huge expanse beyond the hills directly across from me, so large that I can’t see the far shore. It’s very cool and still, clear like green tea, and the banks all pebbly. There’s these birds which keep flying low across the water in pairs, making the most amazing noises, drawn-out wails. I’m glad I didn’t hear that for the first time in the middle of the night.

There are dozens of buildings. And they’re old. And obviously empty, with plants growing in all the wrong places. I’m following the shoreline along a road made of white stones which have been set neatly in the ground. It’s broken apart in places, where tree roots have lifted the stones, but otherwise it’s survived well. There’s even what I think must be mile-posts every so often, though whatever is chipped into them is so old and worn I can’t tell if it’s any kind of script I would recognise.

The buildings are white and blocky, with arched doorways. Most are only one or two stories, with flat roofs, and make me think of Greece, of those pictures of seaside towns. They stretch over the hill, and I think they must continue along the main shore of the lake.

My feet aren’t happy with me for walking so hard all day, but I’m going to press on while it’s still light. Just to check what’s in the buildings, and to see if there’s more over the hill. There might be some with people in them. There might be another, occupied settlement.

Dire lack of friendly aliens

No-one’s been here for a long time. There’s plenty of animal life, though. Ten thousand birds, all singing in the evening. Little pigs which shoot out of the bushes and go racing off, shrieking as if I’d hit them. Chittering squirrelly types jumping from wall to wall. I even saw a cat, a slinky grey one, no different from home. All these different animals, seething through a town overgrown and deserted and empty.

It wasn’t a modern town, back when people lived in it. There’s no remains of cars or powerlines or anything like that. But it’s not caveman primitive either. I can’t figure out how the buildings were made, since the walls and roofs all seem to be one single piece of white stone. Like someone took a big block of plaster of Paris and carved out the parts they didn’t need to make rooms and doors and windows, and then added pretty decorations around the edges. It’s held up really well: worn but solid.

Of the doors and shutters and furniture, most has left barely a trace, making it clear the people have been gone more than a few years. There’s little remaining in the couple of houses I’ve dared to look into, though there’s plenty of guck and muck. No visible bones of people, fortunately – this doesn’t seem to be like Pompeii.

It’s getting dark around 9.30pm (Sydney daylight savings time) and it’s too gloomy right now to explore more. I’m going to sleep on the roof of the house nearest the edge, then take a proper look tomorrow. Over the next couple of days I’ll hunt for useful stuff and decide whether or not to stay. The fact that this one town is empty doesn’t mean anything. Look at Macchu Piccu – it being deserted didn’t mean the rest of the world was. And this means there were people here once.

Friday, November 30

Town ramble

The buildings are all made of this white stone, and have pointed arches for doors and windows. Every one where I’ve bothered to climb up to look has a raised circle pattern in the middle of the roof which I think might represent some kind of flower: each has a central dot and then petals or beams or something radiating out from it to a thick rim. The roofs themselves are slightly indented, and there’s drainage holes at each corner, though no downpipes.

The most common type of building is two levels at the front, and one at the back, with a fenced-off bit of garden. They look like terrace houses, but not pressed up against each other. The upstairs windows are pointed arches as well, but much flatter, like someone sat on them. Then there’s the buildings which are L-shaped downstairs, with no levels on top, and a wall rounding off a square for their garden. There are other configurations, but almost everything is square. Even the two or three towers are just a stack of slightly smaller squares on top of each other.

That makes it sounds really bare and ugly, but it’s not. Partly because there’s so many plants growing over everything, but mainly because everything’s decorated. Around the bottom of every building, and around each window and door is a border. Geometric shapes, or occasionally little stylised animals. All faded yellow and blue and green, with red-earth tones showing up every so often.

I’ve been walking around the town for the entire day. The roads make it fairly easy going, but I put my shoes back on because there’s occasional sharp rubble. Shattered pottery. After I’d made it over the hill I could see both that the lake is huge, and that the town stretches well along the right side of it. I headed toward what looked to be the town centre, where there were some larger clear paved areas, and two of the four-storey towers.

The tower on the north edge of town is closest to the lake, so I picked it for my basecamp. Fort Cass. I’m sleeping on the roof tonight, since the sky is clear and there’s less dirt up here.

I haven’t found any bodies, or not obvious ones, though the chance of unearthing some bones is one of the reasons I’m not that keen on kicking through the grot. Did the people choose to leave, and abandon this place? Was it a plague? A war?

December

Saturday, December 1

Housekeeping

All this morning I’ve focused on Fort Cass. First I searched it properly, and took anything that looked useful up to the roof. The bottom of every room is thick with muck, dust and the remains of ancient bug-nests. I’m being extra careful in case of spiders. Or, y’know, mind-controlling tentacle monsters.

Metal objects come in two types: the things that fall into flaky red crumble when I pick them up, and the things which are green-black but whole. Most of the green-black things seem to be decorative, unfortunately. A pretty statue of a pippin, which I’ve adopted for company. What might be a belt buckle. Some cups. No knives so far, let alone needles. I don’t think the tower was a place people lived, but perhaps a place they worked, or a look-out.

After my search I kicked all the big rubble out of the top level and swept it out using the most bodged-up attempt at a broom ever. The handle fell straight off a jug I found, but it would hold water so I sloshed and swept and scraped the floor, and knocked down all the cobwebs. Not too bad.

Next on the agenda are hairy sheep. I spotted them on one of my trips to the lake: a little flock had come down to the bank to drink. They were north, out beyond the buildings, and wandered off when I went near them. I’m pretty sure they are sheep, since they looked woolly, but they had horns, and long hair growing in the wool. The horns make me a bit nervous, but I’m hoping I can go and cut some wool off them. Unless they have pointy teeth, in which case I’ll pass.

Sheepses

The hairy sheep are guarded by great big hairy rams. All of them except the little ones have horns, but the rams have big twirling ones, and scarred foreheads from bashing up against each other or anything silly enough to come near their ewes. I bet the ewes would give me a good knock too, and in the end I decided not to risk any of them. They might have been domesticated once, but they’re not keen on people now.

I still came back with a haul of wool, though. The sheep live on the hills north of town, the biggest unforested patch of ground I’ve seen so far. Other than a few trees, the grass is broken up by rocks and berry bushes. These are a different sort to the tearberries, also green but going on pink. More sour than cranberries, so I’m guessing they’re not ripe yet either. Anyway, the important thing about them is they’re thorny, and snag anything which comes near them.

For the price of a few scratches I filled my backpack with tufts of wool, crammed in hard, and there’s plenty more back there. The wool is yellow and grotty, but a huge step up from string made out of grass stalks. I have a thousand plans for it, but first on the list is cleaning it. Which means tomorrow I’m going to have to bite the bullet and try to make fire.

If I can manage fire, I should get lanolin as well as clean wool. I don’t exactly know what I’ll do with the lanolin – keep my skin nice? – but it can’t hurt to have it.

Sunday, December 2

Moonfall

Last night was only the second time I’ve seen the moon. This time it was full.

I was still sitting on the roof of Fort Cass when it rose. All the buildings were slowly picked out in blueish white and it was like looking down at a ghost of a town, everything a shimmering mirage, not real at all. The circles in the centre of each roof became the brightest part of each building, until it looked like the light was flowing out from them. And it was. I was sitting right next to one, and didn’t know whether to stay or run when a thick mist began to creep out from the centre circle. But who could not find out what it was like to touch?

About a year ago I was friends with Perry Ryan. Her parents were hardly ever home, and she liked to drink and smoke. The smoking I wasn’t so keen on, but I thought the drinking was great. It made me feel like I had a personality. I really loved it until Alyssa dragged me out of a party at Perry’s house and woke me up enough to tell me I’d been snogging Matt Wilson. The kind of jerk who takes photos. Alyssa went all Mum on me thanks to that, and no more Perry parties.

So the way that cold blue light made me feel warm and happy wasn’t exactly new, and I curled around the circle like it was a hot water bottle and let myself enjoy it. After that, I was quickly into the everything’s a blur stage. I don’t know what made me go looking for more. But I went downstairs (barefoot!) and then to a place I’d only glanced at before, an amphitheatre of step-like whitestone seats in the middle of town. When I’d looked at it during the day, the place had been infested with cats, but that night there was just the light. Gallons of it, drifting off all the buildings and washing into the amphitheatre where a huge version of the circles was glowing so strong the light rose in a column. I went and stood in it, of course, and tried to drink the air, which was more like a heavy fog than a liquid. I’ve never felt better or happier or more alive than last night, standing there with my arms outstretched and my mouth open, inhaling and swallowing light.

So. I woke up, still feeling really damn good, curled in the centre of the amphitheatre. No hangover. It was mid-morning, sunny. My mouth was dry and the arm I was lying on had pins and needles, but otherwise just Cass, feeling amazed at what had happened.

The amphitheatre is cat central. Their home base, just as the tower’s mine. There’s dozens of them, all slinky, big-eared, mostly grey tabby but a sprinkle of other colours. No fluffy Persian types here. Some really cute kittens, but the whole lot so feral and wild I wouldn’t dare try and pick one up. I got myself out of their territory as quickly as I could, and then because I was feeling energetic I walked back along the lake to a stream I’d passed, and watched otters. It’s hard to focus on practical plans when you’ve spent the night drinking the moon.

Nothing about the moon

Before my attempt at fire, I collected another pack of wool and hunted around for something big and metal which didn’t look like it would instantly fall to pieces. I ended up with this flat blue and green bowl which was hell to move since I could only just lift it, and had to put it down every ten steps. I didn’t want to risk breaking it by trying to roll it and don’t know how it will hold up to having a fire built around it. I’m setting the fire up down on the lake’s edge, for ease of access to water.

I wish I knew how to make soap, so I could clean up properly. Even though I wash every day, there’s a layer of greasy grime all over me, and the less said about my hair the better. If I can get the fire started, I’ll at least have hot water to wash in, before I add the wool. The IF is the big problem here. I tried magnifying sunlight with bits of glass, but either the glass isn’t clear enough or the sunlight’s not strong enough. I’m having a rest right now after taking up the stick rubbing challenge. I can make the sticks heat up, but all I end up with is hot sticks and very tired arms. I shredded a page of history notes before I started, but I’m going to tear it all up smaller and try again.

Department of Acquisitions

So I have a fire. I’m not altogether sure what to do to stop it from going out overnight, or if it rains. It made me realise that these houses don’t have chimneys or fireplaces. My wool-boiling went along merrily, and I now have a lot of very wet wool, and a little scummy yellow stuff I ladled off the top. I’ve spread the wool out to dry.

While it was cooking I made a start on more mats. I want to cover both the floor and the windows. I’m not sure what to do with the top of the stair to the roof. There would have been something which sealed it nicely before, but I don’t think I can make a waterproof mat.

I’ve never been particularly great at arts and crafts. Not useless, but I’m nothing close to as good as Mum. I’m too impatient. I start out with neatish little stitches, then they get bigger and untidier. But I’m going to make myself a clean wool nest and a blanket and I don’t care if it’s the ugliest thing around. And I’ll fix up my room, and explore this town and get everything useful I can find.

And then–?

My long term options really suck the life out of any feel-good attempt.

Monday, December 3

The Sad Ignorance of Modern Youth

I’ve seen people shear sheep on TV. And I’ve seen a picture of a spinning wheel. I know a spindle must be pointy because princesses can prick their fingers on them. The mechanics of how wool goes from fleece to thread, though, is something else. And what is carding? When does it happen?

Anyway, turning all the wool into thread and then trying to weave with it is just beyond me. It would take a century even if I knew what to do. Making a big pile of clean wool so I have something soft to sleep on is part of the plan, but I’m also going to have a shot at making a felt blanket. Of course, felt-making was another thing no-one bothered to teach me, but my best guess is that it might work like making paper, and that at least I’ve seen someone do.

I thought about it this morning, while collecting more wool and chasing sheep. The sheep, the ewes at least, aren’t as aggressive as I thought, though they’re skittish as anything. I targeted the middle-sized ones, that don’t seem quite fully grown, but aren’t being babysat by their mums (and don’t have much horn!). My paper scissors aren’t nearly as effective as shears, but I can get nice big hunks by sitting on the sheep’s back and chopping away. All morning collecting wool, and now I have a massive pile of the stuff and am working my way through boiling it while trying to make a mould for the felt.

I’m using the road for the base, a section of large squares where none of the stones have been displaced. Smaller stones and a log gave me an outline of a big rectangle, and I’ll lay out a nice even layer of wet wool and then squish and mush it as flat as I can and let it dry.

I don’t know if they use any glues when making felt. Probably, knowing my luck. Just pressing the wool together won’t be enough – I need to make it stick together. I may have to do a whole bunch of different attempts, adding different things to the mix, but the first time around I’m going to try without additives. Just lots of water, and heat. I figure boiling all the clean wool again, for a really long time, and stirring it up, might make it break down and go gluey and more like paper pulp. Or not. I’m just guessing, but I have plenty of wool to experiment with, and am going to go find some more big bowls to boil it in. My own lakeshore factory.

I’m so looking forward to sleeping on soft wool tonight.

Tuesday, December 4

The Pre-Industrial Mountain

Today I made another, better broom to sweep out the rest of Fort Cass. It’s so stupidly hard to make tools without other tools. Try putting together a broom without large amounts of industrial glue, a nicely finished handle, the straw or whatever it is that they make bristles out of, a drill, a saw, nails, a hammer. Everything I do involves a monumental pile of preliminary tasks, and the simplest thing takes so much time.

The scale of it all got a little much for me this morning, mostly because one of the bowls I was using decided life was too hard and fell to pieces, nearly putting out all the fires and sending me ducking away before I was scalded beyond recognition. I about died of fright, then had an epic tanty and stomped off.

Till now I’d steered clear of doing more than hauling water out of the lake and washing at the edge. This place could be this planet’s equivalent of Loch Ness, after all, and I’m not keen on monsters. Even in Australia, it’s best not to jump into water unless a local has told you whether there’s crocs or stingers or sharks. Since I don’t have any locals, I’ve been watching the wildlife, waiting for a fin to surface or a massive toothy maw to snatch up animals which stray too close. So far I’ve seen lots of waterbirds bobbing about happily enough, and occasionally fish flipping in the air.

So I went swimming. The water’s cold, but since the day was hot and I’ve been hunched over pots of boiling water, this was a good thing. In a proper story, when the heroine goes swimming naked the very handsome prince turns up to try not to watch. Complete failure on the handsome prince part, but lying back in the water staring at a sunny blue sky, I could pretend I was anywhere. Just Cass, on an extended lakeside holiday.

My school uniform has seen better days. Grubby, worn, with little holes burned in the skirt from all my fire experiments. The jacket’s a bit better, since I only wear that at night. Probably I should make more of it just nightwear.

Nutbars

This diary is my volleyball. I didn’t get shipwrecked, and I don’t have a face painted on it, but it’s what I talk to. Did Tom Hanks talk to the volleyball because he’d gone mad, or to stop himself going mad?

Reading back, I see I haven’t really talked about myself very much. Me before here. I’m seventeen. Eighteen in February. I have hazel eyes and light brown hair with just a bit of a wave. It goes blondish if I stay out in the sun a lot – I guess it’s probably blondish now. Using a lake as a mirror isn’t very accurate. I’m 172cm tall, and usually feel a complete hulk around other girls. Mum says I have good skin, but my acne keeps making her a liar. I’m okay-looking; not model material but I clean up all right.

I like The Killers, Gwen Stefani and Little Birdy. Escher prints. Orlando Bloom. Surfing (badly!). But mostly reading. Sf&f, but almost anything really. I was going to study English, history and archaeology at university, and hopefully figure out some way to turn an Arts degree into a job. I’m an above average student, but I’m not brilliant at anything. Partly because I’d rather read than study.

My best friend is Alyssa Caldwell. I like Nick Dale, except when I don’t like him. I have one brother, Julian. My Dad left when I was ten, but we see him most months. The thing I wanted most was to be witty and confident instead of just hanging about the edges whenever I’m with a bunch of people, thinking up brilliant things I could say if the right opportunity arose. Guess I don’t have to worry about that any more.

Being here is amazing. I’m on a whole new world, and the moonlight is wine. Today it was rough, but I’m coping really well, honestly.

And my period’s starting and I hate this. Hate it.

Wednesday, December 5

Felt

I’m now officially sick to death of wool. But I have a blanket, maybe. I’m letting it dry, hoping that it doesn’t just fall to pieces when I try and pick it up.

Thursday, December 6

Tissue

Mum talks occasionally about the myth of the paperless society. She means people printing things in offices, but I’m being hit hard by a lack of paper products at the moment. With a choice of washing my butt in the lake or using leaves when I go to the toilet (not even mentioning that the toilet is a hole I scraped in the ground), I miss paper every day. My history notes didn’t last long and I don’t want to use this diary. Add today’s blocked and dripping nose and the failure of my history classes to tell me what pre-industrial women used for their periods, and I really really miss the papered society.

So anyway, since I wasn’t feeling well, I spent the morning wandering aimlessly about, scaring the pigsies and annoying the cats. There’s a tunnel leading below the amphitheatre, deep enough that it’s too dark for me to be keen on more than standing at the entrance peering in. The cats, at least, behave just like stray cats – they watch you, and leave if you get near. Even though there’s a lot of them, they don’t seem at all interested in hurling themselves at my throat or doing other uncatty things. I wouldn’t dare try and pick one up though.

Festering Bag of Snot

The day’s gone very black and hot. I rescued my craft project, which fortunately was nearly dry and didn’t immediately fall to pieces when I picked it up. It doesn’t much look like felt – more like a bunch of wool pressed flat and only just clinging together – but it’s still much better than a badly woven mat of leaves. A soft, clean (faintly greenish) piece of luxury.

My blocked nose has turned into a chesty cough. By the time the storm started rolling in I felt absolutely rotten, but made myself go hunting in the nearest gardens, bringing up as much trusted food as possible. I won’t have to worry about water, since I still haven’t managed to block the stair to the roof. I’ve set some bowls on the stair to catch water, and positioned my bed against the wall without a window. It hasn’t quite started raining yet, but it looks like it will be bad. Like my cold.

Friday, December 7

Rain and Phlegm

All day. So hard to breathe.

Monday, December 10

Not Drowning

When I was in Year 10 I sat next to a guy named David in Science. We weren’t friends, didn’t socialise outside that class, but we got on well. He was funny and nice, acted the clown to hide he was shy. He moved schools the next year, and early this year I heard that he had died. He’d always had a weak heart, was occasionally sick because of it. I didn’t know what to say, what to feel.

Mum says there’s three bad things about dying: pain and other unpleasantries, the way your friends and relatives feel after, and the fact that you don’t get to find out what happens next. Mum’s an atheist – she says she’s never met a religion that didn’t sound made up. I’m agnostic, because I like the idea of there being something more, but the possibility of it working like Mum thinks it does – that you just stop – doesn’t particularly bother me.

I don’t remember very much about the past couple of days, but through it all was threaded this horror that no-one would know. That Mum would never know. And, yeah, that I wouldn’t find out any of the explanations behind all this.

My family’s a healthy one. Colds occasionally, minor temperatures, chicken pox. I’ve never been to hospital. I needed one yesterday. I don’t know the name for what I had. I thought you caught colds or flu from other people, not just abruptly developed them. Whatever it was, I couldn’t breathe, could barely move. I don’t know what my temperature was, since I felt hot and cold at random, but I’m pretty sure I spent half my time hallucinating (unless there really were dragons and sea monsters spiralling across the ceiling).

Last night was another moonfall. The inside of the building glowed, and I could see the light misting past the windows. I couldn’t tell if it was exactly the same, since I couldn’t get up to go on the roof. I didn’t feel drunk either – I was so out of it I’m hardly sure it happened – but I remember feeling warm and relaxed and not having to fight so much to breathe.

Today I’m not exactly better, but most of the gunk clogging my lungs is gone, and the fever, and I’ve managed to get upstairs to the roof, and sit here and write this, even if it’s taken me half the day. Abandoned as it is, I’m so glad to have found this town. I feel vulnerable enough here. I wouldn’t have survived the last few days without solid shelter. I’m feeling very small at the moment, but so glad to be breathing.

All the effort making my felt blanket, and now it really really needs a wash.

Tuesday, December 11

Not entertaining

It doesn’t get light till past 10am on my watch now. And dark around midnight. Now that I’m breathing better, it seems to take forever for the night to end. All I’ve done so far today is lie on the roof watching the birds on the lake. I’m worried that I’ve hurt my eyes somehow, since random parts of the world are blurry and not quite focused.

I’m going to go down for a forage soon. If I feel stronger later, I might even try to clean my wool collection. Survivor Cass needs some time-consuming projects to keep her sane.

Not that the prospect of trying to relight my fire is anything to look forward to. That’s going to have to wait more than a few days – it just takes too much concerted energy to do, and I can’t even climb a flight of stairs without having to sit down.

Wednesday, December 12

It’s not paranoia if they really are watching you

I’m stronger today – woke up incredibly hungry, which made me realise how little I ate while I was ill. I’ve been getting a lot done this morning, just by stopping and resting every few minutes.

The idea of lighting the fire is still in the way-too-much category, but I’ve managed to clean out my room again, and washed my wool mound and blanket. The blanket didn’t like that, and has developed splits. Once it’s dry I’m going to have to be careful taking it back up to my room, or I’ll have felt strips instead.

While it dries I’m searching the nearest buildings. I’m increasing my collection of metal and pottery objects, though, and even have a few knives. They’re not very sharp, and the handles have all fallen to pieces, but I have a few ideas on how to fix that. In a few days I’ll have a go at making covers for the windows. I also want to make another blanket: if it wasn’t such a lot of work I’d make a mound of them. Though I suppose I’ll have plenty of time to try.

My eyes are still strained. Not everything is blurry, and not all the time, but I’m starting to wonder if I’ll end up needing glasses. That’s annoying, but I’m more bothered by a sense of being watched all the time. I’m forever feeling there’s someone standing just behind me, or trying to catch movement out of the corner of my eye.

It’s not the cats, or not so far as I can tell. There’s a few about, but they’ve never been very interested in me so long as I stay away from their amphitheatre. I’ve been taking a lot of interest in the birds, hoping they have some nests in convenient spots. After weeks living mainly on red pears and washews I’m really interested in the thought of eggs. I’m also going to experiment more with some of the other possible foods I’ve found – I’ve been a bit too scared after the vomiting day, but now I’m starting to wonder if missing out on some of the food groups was the reason I was so sick.

Today’s mantra

There are no black things

Creeping

In the corner of my eye

And

There are no claws

Glinting

In the shadow of that door

But

There’s nothing wrong with

Me

I’m just fine, I’m

Sane

Normal

Not seeing things.

Friday, December 14

Laying their plans

Mum has a CD of this old musical version of War of the Worlds. On that, the Martians make this incredible noise, this uulllllaaaaa howl which is so totally unnatural, not a noise anything on Earth would make.

I’m looking for tripods on the horizon.

The noise isn’t the one from the CD, of course, but it is super weird. A mournful wail so deep I feel it more in my bones than my ears. I’m sitting on the roof of my tower, listening, watching, but I can’t see where it’s coming from. It sounds like the hills are moaning.

Whatever it is, it’s big. Could even dinosaurs make a noise like this? After spending the last couple of days convinced that something’s been watching me, I was creeped out enough already. I wish tonight was a moonfall, or that I’d at least figured out a way to make a light for overnight. I’m not up for fire-lighting. I’m lying here with my pippin statue, pretending it’s company.

At this point, I can’t decide whether it would be better to be going nuts, or to really have things lurking around every corner, stalking me.

Mouse-like

Is there any difference between being eaten by a bear or a big cat and being eaten by a huge and spooky monster? The monster might even be quicker. You could say that the bear would be more natural I suppose – but that’s just familiarity. Bears and cats are the predators which are real to my world, but does it make a difference if the teeth belong to a dragon?

There might be monsters that kill you slowly, though. Or, if there is any kind of soul or afterlife, things which kill you wrong so that your soul is damaged as well.

So can you tell I spent the night obsessing over what was going to come galumphing up to kill me? For all that, it was a good night. The noise stopped when the sun went down, and everything felt lighter somehow. The feeling of being watched had gone, and then the animals came back. I hadn’t realised, but the more I felt I was being watched, the fewer animals I saw. Like they were all hiding, while I wandered stupidly around.

The town’s main population is all on the smaller side. Sometimes the grey terriers show up and chase things, or the deer or mondo elk wander through, but I don’t think they like staying here. It’s very open compared to the forest. Birds dive-bomb the little animals and it’s easy to see anything approaching if you’re high up. What bushes and trees there are aren’t so big and thick that anything large could go any distance without being spotted. If the Ming Cats hunt here, they do it at night.

Today’s project was to block the windows on the ground floor. Fort Cass is still far from impregnable, but every bit helps. I wish my eyes would stop blurring.

Saturday, December 15

Buttered scones would hit the spot

After winding wool into a rough handle for the longest of my salvaged knives, and sharpening it by scraping it against rocks, I walked back along the lake to chop long poles of bamboo from a stand I’d passed. It was surprisingly easy, but I’m so tired now and it’s barely lunchtime. I’m the kind of lumberjack who needs nanna naps.

Sunday, December 16

OMGWTF!

There were two people in my room when I woke up.

They were standing at the top of the stair, talking to each other. Opening my eyes in the grey of just-dawn and seeing these hazy black figures, my heart gave such a thump. And I squeaked and scurried backward and then felt like a complete dick as they just looked down at me and turned out not to be monsters after all.

A guy and a girl, dressed in tight-fitting black stuff, some kind of uniform. They looked to be Asian (black hair and eyes and a creamy-gold skin, though the girl’s eyes didn’t have that fold). I couldn’t understand what they said to me, didn’t even recognise the sound of the language, but the tone wasn’t threatening. Annoyed or irritated, perhaps, but I didn’t get prepare to die vibes off them.

They were surveying my room but not touching anything, and didn’t seem too keen on getting close to me, either. I was foolishly glad I’d only just cleaned up, and all my food was neatly separated in bowls with no rubbish lying about. That I was wearing my underpants. One, the girl, started talking to me, asking questions, and I tried talking back, and was trying not to cry because they were people and even though they understood me as little as I understood them, THEY WERE PEOPLE!! It was all I could do not to scream and throw myself at them.

They had a little talk, then the guy went up to the roof and the girl gestured at me to follow her. I put on my shoes first, and packed my backpack since she didn’t seem to mind waiting around, though she kept her distance from me and kept scanning the room as if she suspected I had someone hidden behind a jar. I immediately started thinking about plagues, and wondered if that was why the town was abandoned.

She led me down to the lakeshore and stopped at a rock and pointed to me and then to the rock, and when I sat down she walked off. But that was okay because I was busy looking at the ship on the lake.

Not a boat. A narrow metal arrowhead shaped thing, creamy-grey with dark blue side sections. It’s big enough to be carrying dozens of people, and is definitely not primitive. Whoever these people are, they’re more advanced than Earth.

The two in black weren’t overwhelmingly surprised to see me here, or very interested. They acted as if they hadn’t expected to see me, and put me aside while they went on with whatever it is they’re really here for.

I saw another pair of them, also black-clad, standing up at the central bluff, but then something came out of the ship. A flat platform which floated above the water, and stopped right next to the bank where I was sitting, delivering two women, older than the pair from Fort Cass, and wearing a mix of dark green and darker green, not quite so tight-fitting as the black outfit. Again they were all business, pointing at me and then one particular corner of their platform and very stern about it.

It’s not like I was going to say no, hopping on very meek, and standing exactly where I was put. The platform began moving straight away, though I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what they were doing to control it. Maybe someone back at the ship was steering.

They talked to each other as they went back, and watched me as if they thought I was going to take a knife to them. I saw no more than a corridor of the ship before they ushered into this little box of a room, and shut the door on me. So small it’s practically a cupboard, but every few minutes it grows warmer or colder or hums. Maybe they’re irradiating me for bugs.

I’ve been here over half an hour. I wish I’d had a chance to pee before being rescued.

Monday, December 17

The excitement of butterfly grapes

It seems an age since I could write in this book, though my watch says it’s only been a day or so. Where to start?

On the ship I was finally let out of my cupboard by a woman in yet another uniform – grey and darker grey with a long pale grey shirt over the top. Just like a doctor’s coat, so no surprise that she was some kind of doctor and gave me a medical exam and a bunch of injections. Most of the injections didn’t involve needles, but something like a compressed air cylinder. The worst was directly to my left temple, which ached, and then ached worse, and now is a dull persistent pain.

She talked a lot while she peered and prodded, and we did a little pantomime of her pointing to herself and saying "Ista Tremmar" and me going "Cassandra". Then the best part of the day beyond being rescued: a shower and a toilet (hilarious pantomime explanations). The toilet was weird – it was a form-fitted bench with a hole, which doesn’t flush or have any water in it – you close the lid after you use it and if you open it again it doesn’t smell like it’s been used. I couldn’t properly see the bottom, but it looked like an empty box. The toilet paper is thickish, pre-moistened squares like baby wipes. And the shower – warm water and soap!

I wanted to stay in there forever, but after Ista had gone through this pantomime of pointing to it and making totally incomprehensible gestures, I’d decided I was supposed to be quick. No towel: the ceiling blew a gale of hot air at me when I turned the water off.

There was a white shift to wear, and I had to put all my clothes in a plastic bag. I couldn’t find a comb or toothbrush, so finger-combed my hair into some sort of order before Ista led me off to a room full of chairs. In the medical room, everything was designed to be tucked away neatly and take up no more space than it had to, so I was almost expecting some kind of cattle class cramped airplane seating, but instead there were these long, padded and reclined chairs, like a cross between a dentist’s chair and a bed. There were three rows of four, each set up on its own platform. When I lay down the cushions squished themselves in around me like they were trying to hold on – the weirdest sensation ever – but it was absolutely comfortable.

Once I was settled in, Ista gave me another injection, a sedative this time. I was awake long enough to see a plastic/glass bubble thing come up around my seat, and then I was out until waking up where I am now, not on the ship, but on a bed-shelf made of whitestone with a mattress on top, in a small but not cramped room. There’s a window, plastic, unopenable and very thick, which looks out over the roof of what seems to be one huge mound of connected building: blockish and white and eerily reminiscent of the town I was in but all joined together and with only occasional windows and doors. The only other thing to be seen is clouds and a black and choppy ocean.

The door is locked, but I found a cupboard which had clean clothes in it (underpants, grey tights/pants and a loose white smock). Other than that, there was only a whitestone shelf before the window and a chair before it which makes me think it’s meant to be a narrow table. I tried knocking on the door, but not in a frantic I’m-panicky-and-bothersome way, and searched about, but there was nothing to do except stare out the window. At least my eyes have decided to stop being blurry.

No greenery visible. I can’t guess why these people all live mounded up here when there’s acre upon acre of lake and forest left to some cats. I keep trying to spot anything which will show me that it’s definitely the same planet. But there’s nothing but whitestone buildings and water, and it’s too cloudy to see sun or moon. Quite a lot of futuristic air traffic. I bounced up and down for a while, thinking that maybe the gravity was a fraction less, but if there’s a difference it’s subtle enough to be dismissed as imagination.

None of my belongings were with me, not even my watch, so I don’t know how long I sat around, but finally a man showed up with a tray of food. He was wearing the same sort of uniform as the rest, but in shades of purple and violet, and was the first person who acted like I was interesting rather than a little problem which had to be tidied away. He gawked at me, in other words, and asked a bunch of questions I had no way of understanding or answering, all in the time it took him to cross and put the tray on the table. One of the greensuits was waiting outside, or I expect he would have stayed and gawked some more. I felt like I was one of those kids found raised by wolves or something.

I dove on the food as soon as the door closed. There were two slices of warm yellow cakey stuff. Not sweet. Some kind of heavy bread? Fruit in jelly where all of the fruit pieces were like butterfly-shaped grapes. A stack of vegetables in sticks – green and white and yellow sticks, all apparently growing naturally to the thickness and length of my little finger. The yellow ones tasted like carrot trying to be celery, the white was zingy and the green very salty. I spent ages on the last of the grapes, trying to work out if grapes would really naturally grow to look so much like butterflies. They tasted like vanilla apples with grape texture.

The way I shovelled all this down my throat, you’d never guess I once wouldn’t eat anything other than chips and gravy for dinner. I didn’t grow out of that till I was in high school and still occasionally annoy Mum with things I’d refuse to even try. But when you’ve spent a good half hour pondering whether to eat the wormy bits of your red pears for the protein – and even tried a bite – then no-one gets to call you fussy any more.

After an age the pinksuited person came back and took the tray, and the greensuit gave me my backpack, so now I have this diary again and my watch and everything. Even my clothes, clean but very battered. And next?

Unobservant

After hours stuck in this room I finally realised that the cupboard wasn’t the only internal door. I probably wouldn’t have even worked out the cupboard if it hadn’t been left slightly open. When it’s shut, there’s just a bit of a dint and if you push the dint the door moves in then slides into the wall. So eventually I spotted another dint, over near the more obvious door to the hall. And it was a door and I have my own bathroom.

Then, after the world’s longest shower, I was sorting through my things and I found they’d somehow recharged my mobile. Even though I’d kept it off almost all the time, the battery had run down after a couple of weeks. I immediately played all my song ring tones, over and over. Five whole songs, and a few partial songs. That made me cry.

And now I have games! No mobile signal whatsoever, which isn’t a surprise, but trivial entertainment for the win!

You too can have an exciting career in medicine! Join our Test Subject Program today.

Two greensuits came and escorted me to two greysuits: the same woman and a younger man. I think I’m in some sort of security wing of a military hospital. Everyone’s in uniform.

The headache from that injection is worse, and wasn’t helped by more poking and prodding and taking blood samples and putting me in odd machines. It was very tedious, interesting only because I couldn’t see any way they were controlling all but a few obvious devices.

I tried pantomiming that my head hurt and that I would like some Aspro thank you very much, but though they seemed to understand, they just looked sorry and shook their heads. I’m guessing shaking your head means no here. It’s hard to describe how my head feels – like a blocked sinus, but above my left eye. It’s started to make my sight go all grey with wormy wiggles. I may be having a bad reaction to whatever they were immunising me against, but they didn’t seem at all surprised or worried during my exam.

I’m going to have to lie down.

Tuesday, December 18

Skullburster?

I spent the day curled in the bed, being a complete sook about this headache, and not at all friendly when the greysuits came to check on me. I totally feel like a lab rat. I’m sure they’ve got cameras in here. I can’t even turn out the lights. No switches.

It feels like the front-left of my head is pushing out from the inside. Having showers helps a little, or maybe I’m just feeling the need to make up for lost time. The soap is liquid and very spicy-scented. When I’m not showering I’m peering in the mirror in the bathroom. My left eye looks really bloodshot, but not swollen. And I look horrible. I always thought it would be nice to be really thin, but I’m haggard. I had no idea I looked this bad. It’s only been a month.

Outside is all storms, the lightning strange and unreal because the thunder is blocked out. The water looks very black and mountainous and I’m glad I’m not in it, but I’m starting to wish I wasn’t here. I just can’t figure these people out. They weren’t at all surprised to find me in that town, though it’s obvious none of them recognised my English. One of the shots they gave me seems to have helped bunches in clearing the last of that super-cold away, and they’ve fed and clothed me and put me in a room. And injected me with something which I can’t believe was just an immunisation. Do they find so many random people from other planets that it’s normal to use them as test subjects? They’re not even trying to figure out a way to communicate with me.

If my head hurt less I’d have the energy to be scared.

Wednesday, December 19

A Vision of Walls

My eyes are going strange again. Not blurriness on random objects this time, but lines. Symbols. It’s like I’m seeing an outline of this room overlaid over the room itself, with squiggles in odd spots. I don’t know whether to be worried about seeing things, or if there might be some kind of hologram being projected into the room.

My head no longer feels like it’s going to explode, though it still aches a fair bit.

Dotty

My headache is more or less gone, but now I have a dot. A green dot.

As hallucinations go, this is an unwavering one. It looks like a piece from a game of checkers, floating at eye height. I can’t touch it, and it doesn’t seem to cast a shadow. It’s been there at least ten minutes.

I’ve heard of people who see sounds as colours. And of brain tumours pressing in places they shouldn’t be and causing problems. The question of what that injection did to me has gone beyond scary now.

The other thing I’ve noticed is that it’s still night-time. It was day before the storm, but I haven’t seen the sun since. Possibly I’m on a different world again, maybe. Is the gravity less, or do I just feel more energetic than before? Has it been night for a day straight, or did I just sleep when it was light?

Thursday, December 20

A shot of words

Escorted again to the greysuits, and OW! They had me lie down on another dentist-style chair, this one with its own little helmet. I can’t say I was keen, but the greensuits were waiting just outside. Is it better to be a dignified test subject, or a defiant but battered one?

I was just noticing that there was a green dot in the centre of that room too when they turned their evil torture machine on and all these words began to squiggle across the back of my eyes. If I’d thought my head was going to explode before, that was nothing to having a dictionary injected into my skull.

Someone really has to explain the concept of painkillers to these people.

I think I had convulsions. It was a bit hard to tell, but I remember them holding my arms. There was some blacking out going on as well, and a long hazy time after where they were talking about my heart rate and stuff. After a while I must have passed out properly, and now I’m back in my box.

There’s a thousand thousand words sitting in my skull. They murmur at me whenever I look at anything. As I’m writing this there’s an awkward echo giving me a different set of sounds, and an image of strange squiggles which I presume mean what I’m writing. I don’t think I know this language, but sounds are suggesting themselves to me in response to things I look at and even things I think. So I could on one level understand what the greysuits were saying, in the way you half understand those garbled train announcements, where you get the gist and guess the rest. It’s not like having an English-Alien dictionary.

I can even read the squiggles I’m hallucinating around the room, in that I’m sure they read No Access when I glance at them, but if I look at them closely they’re not letters I recognise, let alone words. Trippy. Still, having a language poured into my skull will save a lot of time, and I’d be 11/10 pleased if my head didn’t hurt so much.

Infodump

I was given a few hours to recover from dictionary-injection, and another meal, which helped a lot. Then off to a meeting-type room to talk – actually talk! – to the first greysuit and a new one. Since my internal translation service doesn’t automatically make me able to pronounce their words or understand their grammar, I mainly listened and tried to understand what the hell they were going on about. Non-literal phrases especially throw me, just as anything like jump the shark would surely confuse them. They spoke very slowly, and had a plastic sheet on the table which acted like a computer screen and handily showed pictures to help me along. First screen I’ve seen – all the rooms I’ve been in are incredibly bare.

The echo in my head had already let me know that the Ista part of Ista Tremmar is a title, a bit like Doctor. The other greysuit was Sa Lents, and I think Sa is a general honorific. He’s going to be my sponsor.

Centuries ago people called the Lantar lived on the planet I was on. It’s called Muina. These people were very learned and in touch with the Ena (which, confusingly, seems to mean spaces). These Lantar triggered a disaster which shattered the spaces and caused thousands of mutant monsters called Ionoth to show up and eat people. So all the Lantar ran away and went to a bunch of different planets. This one is called Tare. They didn’t find it a very easy planet to live on, and sometimes the Ionoth things would show up here.

Recently the Tare people started to move between planets again to try and find a solution to the Ionoth problem. They found other worlds where people from Muina survived, but they consider Muina still too dangerous to live on. All the people in uniform I’ve met are part of Tare’s research and defence against the Ionoth organisation (called KOTIS, which must be some kind of acronym, or just doesn’t translate).

Remember I said no-one was really surprised to find me at that town? Well, they weren’t. They estimate that at least twenty people each year get accidentally whisked off to somewhere else through something which sounds like wormholes: either to Muina or to one of the known worlds or just totally somewhere else. They find about half of them, some alive, some dead, and if they’re from one of the known worlds they send them back.

Earth – you probably figured – isn’t one of the known worlds. They asked me a bunch of questions to try and figure if I was from a world they’d had a stray from before. They call people who accidentally wander through wormholes strays. Sa Lents is some kind of anthropologist and he says that my description of Earth doesn’t match up to the lost worlds previously described and he’s looking forward to learning and writing about it. Good for him, I suppose.

Anyway, I guessed right when I said they weren’t at that town to rescue me. There’s a particular kind of Ionoth called Ddura (massives) which are really rare and from what little I could make out are something like the whales of the Ena. REALLY massive, if that was what was making the incredible noise before I was rescued. They’d detected one on Muina and rushed out to try and study it, but were too late and only got me instead.

I find it hard to believe that the people from Earth are from some other planet. For one thing, you’d think we’d have legends or stories about Ionoth and this Ena place and Muina. And though they talked about this happening thousands of years ago, modern humans have been on Earth for at least tens of thousands. So, not convinced, though since Tare people look just like Earth people there’s probably some connection.

Strays count as a kind of refugee, and other than representing a slight curiosity for being from a new world, I’m not particularly unusual. Fortunately, it doesn’t seem like Tare has a refugee policy like Australia’s, since I wouldn’t enjoy mandatory detention. Although they are trying to find all the worlds that the Muinans went to, and so are already trying to find Earth in a way, they didn’t seem to think I should get my hopes up about it. Apparently the Ionoth have been really bad lately and they’re doing a lot more defensive work than exploration.

Sa Lents is going to be my sponsor. After some more quarantine and testing I get to be integrated into society, and that means a couple of years at least of living with Sa Lents and his family while I learn the language and enough skills to get a job, and he conveniently does a little research project on Earth. He has two daughters – one older and one younger than me – and the older one has just left home.

They started talking about how long it would take me to learn to use the Kuna (a word which also seems to mean spaces), and we had a really confused discussion for a while until I finally figured out what the injection to the temple was for. I don’t quite understand the whole spaces thing, but the nearest I can make out the people on this planet are several steps ahead in terms of computers and networks and virtual environments, and before they could give me this internal dictionary, they had to set up an interface in my head.

I’m a cyborg! The Tarens use nanite technology and my head has been exploding the last few days while a computer built itself in my brain. And I’m not hallucinating the dot in the middle of the room or the floating words. That’s just the default display of the computer in my head. Before I get sent off with Sa Lents I have to pass basic interfacing-with-virtual-environments training. And currently I have no access rights to anything, so all I can see is a dot.

I just reread all this big long entry and it sounds nothing like the explanation they gave me, which involved showing me pictures obviously meant for children and saying in their language: "Muina. Home. Planet. Home. Lantar. People." And me sitting there looking puzzled, as my injected language tool triggered concept recognition, not words. I’m not sure how much of what I’ve written down matches what they were trying to tell me. The pictures were more helpful than what they were saying.

It was only when I was taken back to my room and had had a shower that I started crying. Because being rescued and going home are worlds apart. And, weird as this sounds, because I’m not a surprise to them.

Friday, December 21

Say Ah

Another medical exam to start my day – if it is the start. Since it never gets dark outside and the lights don’t go out in my room, I’m having a lot of trouble keeping track of time. My meals are all very similar – something fruity, vegetable sticks, either bread or processed fishy stuff – so all I have to go on is when they choose to talk to me, and a watch which tells time for a totally different planet.

Being able to ask questions, no matter how slowly, really makes a difference to the poking and prodding sessions. The doctor is a pretty nice lady. She even apologised for not giving me painkillers, but apparently it can cause problems with the way the interface builds itself.

We had a long, if infantile, chat about the interface, which has left me feeling very dubious. I kept picturing my brain being shredded by little wires, until it dribbles out my nose, but from the helpful illustrations Ista Tremmar showed me, the nanites are so small they build a mesh which coats the insides of veins. Computerised cholesterol? Ista Tremmar said that almost all strays have a naturally strong affinity for the Ena, and for some reason this effects the amount of body real estate the interface grows to cover, which confused me again because I don’t understand what the Ena is or its connection with nanites.

Having a large interface may or may not be a good thing, but it sounds like knowing how to use it is what matters. These people spend all their time permanently wired into a really complex virtual world, and they start living there just after they figure out the whole walking thing.

Kuna seems to translate to virtual space, maybe. I desperately need a real dictionary, rather than these vague feelings that what they’re saying matches something I know about. I still can’t quite decide what they mean by the Ena. It could be some kind of other dimension? Or an evil spirit world? The fact that it’s involved in travelling really quickly from one planet to another makes me think of hyperspace, but hyperspace is really just a magic science word people made up, isn’t it?

Saturday, December 22

Meh

I can’t sleep. I’m not even sure I’m supposed to be sleeping right now.

Today was my first session with Sa Lents. I told him I don’t think the people of Earth are descended from Muinans, and he said that other Muinan-settled worlds had forgotten their origins too, and that I was definitely Muinan-descended according to my genes. I refrained from pointing out that that could mean that Muinans are Earth-descended.

The rest of the time was spent on geography. I drew a really bad map of Earth with my finger on the tablecloth screen and wrote down the countries I could remember.

I’m supposed to start on interface learning tomorrow, once they’re sure there’s been no strange issues caused by my language injection, which I reacted to poorly. I am very bored. I wish I’d brought my pippin statue along for company.

Sunday, December 23

Digital mind

No more complaining about being bored. Interface training is giving me some idea just what having a computer in your head means.

The training is aimed at little kids and is as much teaching them to read as it is how to use their interfaces. Just read. They don’t teach kids to write. So obvious, but yet so strange. If you can select a letter from the alphabet quicker than writing one out, why bother with writing? I’m being trained by a complex teaching program which looks like a cuddly lady in her thirties. Sana Dura. It took me way too long to realise she wasn’t an actual real-time person, but eventually I realised that whenever I interrupted her and asked my scrambled questions, she would answer, but then go back to exactly what she’d been saying, in exactly the same tone.

I did exercises for ages – I want out of this room – and the more the basics settle in, the less straightforward the training becomes. At first it was just me and Sana Dura standing in a colourful room, with her telling me to push buttons which I can see before me. I can’t really describe how I push them. I see them floating in front of me and they activate if I want them to. Then I graduated to alphabet and it was a very interactive touch the letter game which put 3D movies to shame. It was as if I was in my room, and also this colourful world of floating letters and flowers and cutesy animals, the two worlds overlaid on each other. I find it very disorienting unless I close my eyes to block out reality.

There are twenty-eight letters in their alphabet.

Monday, December 24

86400

I can turn out the lights! It feels like such an achievement, but so far as I can tell it means that this tutorial program thinks I’m about five now. I can also open the internal doors without having to go poke the locks, and I can make the window go dark like extremely tinted glass. All of it’s extremely simple – it’s just that having run through all these training exercises I’ve had an upgrade to my status so that I can use some of the minor room functions. My injected language has also settled in more – I’m not going to be able to speak it properly any time soon, but it helps my memory during all the infant lessons I’ve been having. Accelerated learning, I’d guess you’d call it, and I’m taking big leaps forward – enough to start asking more complex questions.

During yesterday’s session with Sa Lents we used my watch to work out how long an Earth year is compared to a Tare one. Fortunately, while they use different squiggles for each digit, their number system is apparently the same as ours. I don’t know how I would have managed if they used binary or base three or something. I’m good at maths, but not that good.

Even though there’s now a calculator in my head, I find it really hard to think in their digits, so I only used it for the large multiplications and divisions, and did the workings in the back of my diary. Sa Lents said he found the way I write very interesting – kind of like cave-paintings to him, I bet.

Anyway, one Earth year is worth about three Tare years. Sa Lents is over a hundred Tare years old. Their living day is about twenty-six Earth hours long, though neatly divided into ten hours of a hundred minutes each. What they consider a second is not quite the same as an Earth second, and there’s a hundred of those in each minute. For every five of these days the planet has one solar day (which explains why it stayed dark outside so long). I don’t in the least understand how a planet can have a longer day but a shorter year than Earth’s, yet similar gravity.

The mind’s eye

Den = second

Joden = minute

Kasse = hour

Kaorone = living day

Kao = day (single day/night cycle)

So my name is a bit like a reference to time here. That’s better than the Earth meaning by far. Cassandra means she who entangles men, which has got to be the suckiest name meaning ever, and that’s not even getting into the whole cursed by Apollo and then everyone thinks you’re mad and you know everything’s going to end up a mess and can’t do anything about it part. I’ve never understood why Mum picked it, since she’s usually more sensible about names. I can think of ten million names I’d rather have than one which stands for tragic futility and madness.

That’s – it sounds circular saying it, but it drives me nuts, thinking that I’m really nuts. I mean, walking through cracks in the world to different planets and having computers installed in your head? The giggling in a straightjacket possibility seems so much more likely.

And I’m not. I’d know, somewhere deep down, I’d know if this was all imagination. Delusion. I’d never have made up being so sick, for a start, or those blisters. I’m not imagining any of this. I’m not.

…

Must sleep more and practice interface less. Then I wouldn’t get so worked up over stupidities.

Tuesday, December 25

From here to you

Merry Christmas Mum. Merry Christmas Dad. Merry Christmas Jules. If there was some way I could make you feel better right now, I would.

Wednesday, December 26

Moving on

I’ve been released from the Institute! I’m on parole with Sa Lents, after a final medical exam where they decided they don’t need to keep me under close observation any longer.

One thing the doctor told me just before she sent me off really brought home what kind of society I’ve found myself in. I currently have the barest access rights to the systems around me, but the government here has access rights to me. My interface isn’t just one way, and I’m not in control of it. It’s a school, entertainment, a health monitor and an alarm. It will send a distress signal if I’m sick or hurt, and it can stimulate my brain in a way which regulates hormones. I’ve automatically been regulated for birth control. Rules about having babies are really strict here, and you have to be given permission to conceive, for each and every baby you want. You have to pass some kind of parental worthiness test and everything.

Having someone else put me on birth control without my permission is just…I feel really strange about it, especially considering the uncomfortable conversation I had with Mum about babies at the beginning of the year, when I went out with Sean J. Sean and I have been friends a few years, and we were trying to see if we could be more, but it was totally a bad idea. We were careful enough, the couple of times we did it before the sheer awkwardness brought us to our senses, but if I’d wanted a baby, I could have walked down that path. I don’t get that choice here. I’d have to fill out a form first, and hope someone stamped it APPROVED.

Sa Lents is taking me to his family’s home on a place called Unara, which involves a long journey by plane (or tanz, as these spaceshippy flying machines are called – they don’t look at all like our planes). It’ll take a few hours, but my interface practice comes with me everywhere. I’ve a whole world of work installed in my head, and it’s powered by my own body, so won’t run low on batteries – unless I do.

I’m growing increasingly confident using the interface, now that I properly know a few basic words. The concepts aren’t very different from email or web browsers, just without a mouse or keyboard. I haven’t qualified for some of it yet, but have just stopped to write after sitting through the introductory lessons for how to record everything I see and hear, and keep a personal library. Every person on this planet is a CCTV system. I’m definitely going to have to remember that when I talk to anyone, or am in sight or earshot of anyone. I keep telling myself it’s not that different to everyone having a mobile phone and access to You Tube, but it’s hard not to be a little creeped out.

Talking to people remains a huge challenge. I’m more or less okay listening, at least to get the general gist, but it’s going to be a mid-sized forever before I can talk anything like normally. I don’t know any of the words. It’s not like a proper dictionary. I can’t look up cat and find nyar. Instead, I think cat and my head produces an oozy possibility of words and, increasingly, a lot of handy labelled pictures. But it can be hard to tell if it’s meant to be a picture of an animal or a predator or hunter or kitten – and abstract concepts are far more difficult. My head fills with pictures and feelings when people talk and an odd kind of certainty of knowing what they said without understanding how I know. The idea comes without necessarily an exact translation. I’m trying to figure out how to annotate my head with words I’m certain of.

Anyway, I’m pretty excited just to get out of that military facility.

Thursday, December 27

Overload

Until today, I’d hardly seen any people. Those couple of blacksuits back on Muina, and a few greensuits and greysuits and the guy who brought my meals. The only people who have spoken to me were Sa Lents and Ista Tremmar. At the KOTIS facility all I really saw were three rooms and a few corridors. And, biggest change of all, my interface was at the most minimal level possible.

During the flight – which was a military flight and not open to the public – Sa Lents taught me the different access options of my interface. This is a bit like choosing to have subtitles when watching a DVD, but so much more. I had to laugh when I turned on the Public information: people option, and you could see people’s names floating above their heads. World of Warcraft without the shoulder pads. You can’t hide your name, apparently, any more than you can absolutely shut the government out of your head.

There are tons of different display options or filters. Open is full of things everyone can see, and is broken down into different levels – emergency and directional and décor and advertisement and entertainment and so on. Then there’s closed or tight, which is things only you or a particular group can see. Having made sure I knew how to filter all these display levels on and off, Sa Lents had me turn all but directional and décor off before we reached Unara. This was a good move.

Tare is fantastically crowded. I hadn’t realised the extent while I was locked away, but they’re seriously packed in. From Sa Lents' description – and the world map he showed me how to display – there are a lot of small islands, but only two decent land-masses, and even those are more Tasmania-sized than Australia-sized. Unara is on an island called Wehana, which is almost all city. Not suburbs, not even sky-scrapers, but this deep below the ground and high above the surface endless blocky whitestone mass – the same as the Institute, but monumentally larger, like a beehive of people. External windows like the one I had are really rare and not even very popular because people feel exposed and unsafe. I couldn’t tell if Sa Lents meant that windows really did make you less safe, or if it was some kind of agoraphobia.

So anyway, we flew through very bad weather over a lot of dark, uninviting water until we reached Carche Landing, which is a main airport of Unara, and Unara pretty much tops what you’d get if you compacted Earth’s biggest cities into a ball. People everywhere, going every direction, and even the two display filters I had on were just Too Much. The Unaran idea of décor involves holograms of fishes and clouds and winding patterns shifting all over the place and way too much colour and movement. I shut it off.

Sa Lents didn’t seem to mind too much – or probably wasn’t very surprised – at the way I clutched at his arm. Thinking back it was really just a humungous shopping centre, but airier and with tons of plants (vegetables mainly) growing everywhere, and reminded me vaguely of the Jetsons cartoon with glass tubes with long train things shooting through them. But the constant movement, the absolute mass of people and the height of the central atrium of Carche Landing had me the most freaked out I’ve been in ages. And the noise. The hive was buzzing.

We boarded one of the glass-tube trains, which thankfully blocked out most of the noise so I could get my head back and look around just at the people inside of the train. I hadn’t realised that not everyone here is Asian (or looks Asian, whatever: with black hair and golden skin and Asian eyes I’m calling them Asian). Maybe one in ten Tarens don’t look particularly Asian. I haven’t seen anyone really black-skinned or any bleached Nordic types, but there’s all shades in between and I’m not the only pinkish, brown-haired girl, so I at least don’t stick out completely.

Unless we’re less genetically similar than I’ve been told, the dye bottle is popular, especially colours like lime green. Clothes are almost normal, though formal wear for men seems to involve long coats or robes. I was beginning to think everyone on the planet wore tight-tailored uniforms, but that was just the military, of course. Nenna – Sa Lents' younger daughter – dresses like she’s out of a music video, but I think I’ll save trying to describe Nenna till later. I’m supposed to have gone to bed.

Saturday, December 29

The teens here are your forties

Sa Lents' daughter Nenna is the Energiser Bunny of talk. Or just the Energiser Bunny generally, since she’s always moving about, dancing in place, dashing back and forth. I like her, but I’m glad I’m not sharing a room with her.

The Lents have a three-bedroom apartment in an area called Kessine. They’ve been very nice to me so far, though Sa Lents has been off working at some kind of university and his wife, Ketta, is what I think equates to stock market broker, and spends almost all her time in her home office gazing into nothing I can see. Sa Lents handed me over to Nenna for a couple of days so that she could help me adjust before we started in on our interviews again. He knows how much harder it is for me to talk than listen, and Nenna’s really good at explaining everything we do or see, and asking yes and no questions, and bringing some fun to my infant status. And I guess it’s not really worth his time interviewing me until I can string a sentence together.

Nenna finds it all very exciting having a stray to look after, and devoted herself to showing me how to change the wall decorations and access the way-too-much entertainment and telling me all the things she thinks worth watching and listening to and getting me to try on her clothes. What was that song? "We’d Make Great Pets". I do feel a little like a new pet, but really Nenna’s just a normal kid and doesn’t mean anything by it.

One thing I found out right away is that Nenna’s absolutely obsessed with the blacksuits. The Setari. The word means something like experts or specialists, and after two movies, all the poster-hologram-things in Nenna’s room space, and Nenna going on about them constantly, I’ve figured out they’re some kind of psychic soldier. She was really disappointed that I only saw two of them for a couple of minutes.

The movies are highly useful, though I can’t tell if they’re supposed to be realistic or over-the-top. One was so 3-D I had to look behind me to catch everything going on, but otherwise they’re pretty similar to what you’d get out of Hollywood, which I guess means that culturally it’s not that different here, for all that most of what’s going on plotwise goes over my head. But watching them really helps with my language mountain: I’m picking up the things people say most commonly, and the way people greet each other. Mixing movies and television in with my interface lessons will make this easier, and more interesting.

Nenna’s at school at the moment. Despite all the lessons you can have over the interface, there’s still mandatory school attendance for sport and practical science classes and other group sessions. Since the city’s not open to the real sun, there’s three shifts each day instead of a formal night and day. Nenna goes to Shift Three school, and attends four out of six days, which gives me a useful break. Nice as it is to have someone who wants to talk to me, it’s also good to have some quiet to think.

I’m not allowed to go out of the apartment yet, but Sa Lents says that when I’m a little more adjusted, Nenna can take me on a tour.

Monday, December 31

This world is not my world

For every thing I find which is similar to Earth, there’s as many which are different.

Tare’s not a democracy, for a start, or a monarchy. From what I could tell from my session with Sa Lents, it’s some kind of quasi-meritocracy. To be put in charge of anything you have to pass exams on related knowledge and practical competence. It sounds like you have to pass exams to get to do pretty much anything; it’s all about demonstrating capacity. The top non-military government jobs are Lahanti (city leaders like mayor, except that they’re mayors of cities of tens of millions) and any resident can apply to be a Lahanti. They have to pass all these tests and then a council chooses from the top scorers. I asked Sa Lents if people could cheat, or buy better results, or at least bribe the council if they got top scores and he squirmed around the answer a bit and said that such things were very difficult but that no system was perfect.

I’d already thought about the question of cheating and whether having a computer in your head means that there’s no crime, but it’s not quite so absolute as I thought. Citizens aren’t actively monitored, but breaking into someone’s house, for instance, when you don’t have permission to be there, will trigger alerts. If you attack someone, they can immediately let emergency services observe what they’re seeing. If you’re knocked out, your interface will send an alert for help. One of the movies Nenna and I watched showed bad guys using programs which changed who the system thought they were, and gave permissions they weren’t supposed to have. Probably as likely as any of the hacker excesses of Hollywood but still based on the possible. Tare comes across as hard-working, orderly, and obedient, but not any kind of ideal society. I’m not going to forget the forced birth control any time soon. And they have monster attacks, of course. All the movies Nenna wants me to watch either involve cute boys or monster attacks or both – so not too different from what I watch at home, hah.

There’s no stilettos, either. It was a funny thing to notice. Nenna’s wardrobe is full of platform boots, and sandals, and a couple of pairs of court shoes, and that’s what they’re wearing in the movies too. Haven’t seen anyone tottering about on pinpoint high heels. Make-up and hair is pretty similar – other than the popularity of day-glo dyes – and there seems to be a complex tradition involving henna-coloured designs on your face. Geometric patterns on guys, and curly tendrils for girls, usually on one cheek or the corner of the forehead or drifting up from the throat. It seems to mainly be worn with really formal, dressed up outfits.

No printed-out books that I’ve seen. That sucks. I don’t mind reading onscreen, and there’s no glare or eyestrain problems if you’re reading inside your head, but it’s just not the same as a proper paperback. Also, no meat in all the meals I’ve eaten so far, except for fish. And that not very often. At least, I think it’s fish. Maybe they cook up the monsters they hunt.

Though it’s common not to change surnames when you get married on Tare, the tradition is for the husband to take the wife’s name, so Lents is Tsa Lents' wife’s family name. That’s kind of cool.

Beyond the stars, rampant consumerism

I have money. The allowance has an official name which is very long and vague, but boils down to "Lost Aliens Stipend". Nenna and her mother are taking me shopping for clothes and to see some kind of sport called Tairo.

I keep swapping between excited interest and an unexpected urge to start yelling. I far prefer shopping on Tare to starving on Muina, and yay relatively benign alien civilisation. But the allowance gave me a loud, clear message that what happens now is I learn the language, find a job, build a life here. Getting me home is just not a priority to these people.

Working on gratitude adjustment.

Making a display

Nenna finds my taste in clothes very boring, but otherwise it was a fun day. It’s hard not to enjoy shopping, and I found clothes I liked and managed not to have my head explode from all the layered interface displays everywhere, and didn’t gawk too much at the occasional person who looked really outrageous – blue glowing patterns beneath skin, hair extensions that reach out and touch passers-by, clothing that constantly oozes and changes shape. Nenna called these kind of people teba, which I think might be the equivalent of Goths. Or avant garde experimental artists. They were certainly an exciting reminder that I wasn’t in just any old shopping centre.

Plus Tairo rocks.

Picture a big glass box, with the audience in rows all up against the outer walls. There’s a hole in each wall, painted a different colour, and a bunch of poles at different heights – a lot like canary perches. Add four teams playing a kind of extreme handball with three balls at once. Then make the players totally Spiderman Jr, able to bounce up the walls and off the poles and leap and twist and somersault – and fly.

Psychic powers, just like the blacksuits. Psychic powers are connected to this Ena in some way, and apparently almost everyone on Tare can use the Ena to some mild degree, though things like flying is elite athlete stuff.

Or, possibly, the Ena or the interface enhances natural psychic abilities. Nenna’s explanation was way too confusing.

Anyway, the Tairo match was great fun to watch. I could feel the players thud off the walls right in front of me, and they do things which would make Cirque d’Soleil green. And we had a really nice meal, and Nenna’s mother talked to me after about, well, girl-things and how it all works here. The birth control means I won’t have periods, for a start, which is a big bonus. And she gave me a cream which is some kind of super hair remover. Use it once or twice a year and no stubble. Deodorant comes in waxy sticks. She gave me a few tips on polite behaviour, and then made me cry because she reminded me so much of Mum, all dry and calm and comfortable, and she held me while I made an idiot of myself and told me I didn’t have to pretend not to be homesick and frightened.

January

Tuesday, January 1

Triple the New Years!

Happy New Year! I wish I was watching fireworks right now. I wonder if New Year is half as big a thing here, since it happens every four months? Nenna’s older sister Liane is going to come over today and we’re going to go to the Roof. I can tell Nenna’s not really comfortable with the excursion: the outside on this planet is basically cold and stormy or cold and windy, and most people simply never go outside. I tried describing Australia to Nenna, and I think even Sydney Harbour would freak her out, let alone somewhere like the Outback. Tarens are severe indoor types. I’m not exactly bush savvy, but, wow, I hope Nenna never gets zapped to Muina.

Whoosh

As Taren days go, I gather this was a good one. Not raining, only lightly overcast, and winds that you could stand upright in. The sea was seriously far down, and looked like the kind you see in those paintings of sailing ships almost standing on their ends. But even the sea was nothing compared to the overwhelming hugeness of this city. The largest land mass on their planet, and almost all of it one whitestone block, like an unsymmetrical step pyramid that just goes on and on.

There was plenty of outdoor activity, but mostly confined to tanz (airships) arriving and leaving in the distance. But I did spot a few other people standing out on the vast whiteness. Maintenance workers, Liane said.

Nenna’s sister is more serious and not quite as nice as Nenna. Not nasty, but she wasn’t too good at hiding how impatient my slow, stupid-sounding speech made her.

Thursday, January 3

Fruit of the Sea

Much of the food on Tare is grown underwater. I thought some of the vegetables were like seaweed, but I didn’t realise how many were water plants. And then there’s plants grown in the big atriums and inside parkland, and vats of algae and hydroponic installations. There are a few bits of land which aren’t covered by city, but it sounds like they’re mostly wind-blasted nature reserves. They farm fish in ocean arrays, and red meat is an incredibly expensive delicacy.

Today was spent mainly on interface training while Nenna was at school. Well, it’s not really interface training any more, just kiddie school. Lessons designed for six year-olds are still hard for me for follow, and very dull. At times I’m just tempted to watch the entertainment channels instead, but after stumbling into a show which I afterwards discovered was labelled "in-skin", I decided I needed more language skills before randomly sampling the entertainment here. "In-skin" isn’t a euphemism for porn, though I bet it’s used for that. It means that every sense that the interface is able to record is transmitted to the audience. Sight, hearing, smell, and touch. I never entirely lost track of me, sitting on a couch, but someone else’s experience was layered over the top of that and I could only cope with a few minutes of that before I had to stop. Then I went and had a shower.

I keep telling myself that I need to be more responsible about my schoolwork, and then five minutes of basic maths leaves me gritting my teeth with anger. I. Just. Finished. High. School. I know addition. I’m hoping to convince someone to tailor this stupid course to me sooner rather than later.

It’s clear that the Lents are giving me some settling-in time before starting to push, but soon Sa Lents will want to work on his study of Earth, and of course I can’t live with the Lents forever. From what little my ineffectual interface searches have shown me, strays don’t have a lot of career options open to them even after they’ve learned the language. And I can’t figure out how long the Taren government will pay for me to try.

Nenna’s thinking about careers right now too: she has to do some aptitude tests tomorrow, and is pretending not to be worried about it. She says she’s going to be a song star, and doesn’t need to excel at this aptitude chain. Song stars are almost as popular as the Setari are, and Nenna’s favourite show in the world is one where this girl is a song star and a Setari. Lots of cute guys, as you can imagine.

There are practically no images of real Setari. The blacksuits don’t do publicity, apparently. They’re taken to the KOTIS island when they’re really little, and are raised to be paranormal soldiers, with limited visits to see their families. I couldn’t work out if they can choose not to go.

Saturday, January 5

Fall apart

Just got my diary back. A lot of not-great stuff happened, and I won’t be staying with the Lents any more.

Nenna did well on her test, and the next day she was allowed to take me out on her own to celebrate. Of course she decided to show me off to her friends.

We went to a place which was a cross between a café and one of those video game arcades where people have Dance Dance Revolution competitions, except this was a psychic powers show-off arena. There was a table of girls waiting, and a couple of guys, and it wasn’t fun being exotic curiosity of the month. It’s not that they weren’t nice, or sneered at me or anything. They got a big kick of listening to me talk in English and even though my attempts to speak Taren are insanely confusing, they hung on my every word as I told them my survival adventures: they were just as interested in what I’d done on Muina as what Earth is like, which is something the KOTIS people didn’t really care about. Being outside, finding your own food, sleeping under the stars: that’s all incredibly foreign and scary to Tarens.

They also wanted to know everything about the Setari I’d met. The Setari have some kind of security level which means that you can’t film them (using the interface – I expect an ordinary camera would work on them). They show up as outlines on interface recordings unless you have permission to capture their image.

My mobile was a useful way to avoid having to keep talking, though it’s running low on batteries again. Nenna’s friends recorded all the song ring tones, and made me promise to translate the lyrics, which I guess would be a good language exercise. They seemed to like the two Gwen Stefani songs, and Mr Brightside. Sweet Dreams by Marilyn Manson weirded them out, but the one they liked best was that closing theme to the Portal game – Still Alive – and so I guess they have a thing about syrupy-sweet sounding music. That it’s a psychotic, murderous computer totally contradicting itself is not something that’s going to translate.

After a while the two guys had a match on the Psychic Showdown thing and that’s where it stopped just being embarrassing and got messed up.

By this time, thanks to Nenna’s patient and devoted explanations of all things Setari, I knew a bit more about psychic powers. Everyone has a connection to the Ena, which seems to be some kind of psychic dimension (or world of dreams, or something). The connection manifests as telekinesis or pyrokinesis, etcetera: there’s a couple of dozen known psychic talents. The original Muinans were really strong in their connection to the Ena, more so than most of the people on Tare are now. Tairo players are strong, but the most powerful psychics are in the Setari, where gifted children are pushed to extremes to increase their abilities.

However, with the interface and circuitry in certain rooms, even weak psychics can be boosted to use whatever talents they have. The two guys were projectors, I guess you’d call it, and they were able to make illusions. Not very clear ones, but it was fun to watch.

Strays are thought to be fairly strongly connected to the Ena, so before we were due to go home Nenna had me try out a couple of things – image projection and trying to float – which involved me standing in the centre of the room thinking really hard about doing those things and nothing happening. I didn’t have to worry about accidentally burning or blowing things up since the room had a filter that meant it only enhanced certain kinds of actions, and to be honest I was glad nothing happened because it would have been weird to suddenly be psychic.

Nenna’s ability is teleportation, though she’s not strong enough to move more than a foot or so even when boosted. But it was amazing watching her flicker from one spot to another: it made her into more than just a talkative kid. Something magic.

If she puts all her effort into it Nenna can take a passenger, and she offered to jump me. And that was a really bad idea.

We jumped to a nearby atrium and fell two floors. I’ve a broken collarbone and lots of bruises. Nenna’s much worse. She hurt her back, and even with advanced nanotech medicine she’s going to be in hospital a long while.

She didn’t die. I’m so glad. So incredibly – I couldn’t have stood it. Because, you see, it was me. They’re not sure why, but they think that something about me made Nenna’s jump go wrong.

So I’m on the way back to the KOTIS island. Not with Sa Lents this time, but a grim greensuit escort. It was an accident, but I feel so awful. I hurt her.

Sunday, January 6

Back to the Lab

Endless medical scans. Apparently they’d already tested me for potential psychic powers, but the only sign they could find was the possibility of being a projector (perhaps the least useful ability in a world where everyone is their own home movie theatre). When they finally sent me off to get some sleep – back in my old room – I can’t.

Part of that’s because I’m sore. They use nanites to glue broken bones back together, but it still needs to heal properly, and I have to lie on my back not to pressure my collarbone. The pain meds wore off too quick.

More tests tomorrow. They haven’t been able to find any reason at all for Nenna’s jump to have gone strange.

Monday, January 7

Turn it up to 11

Today they moved on to practical experiments in a different part of the KOTIS building: a huge, reinforced room with observation windows and massive blocks of greenish metal in a row from small to large. Test Room 1.

First they (voices in my head of people I’d never met) had me stand in the centre of the room and told me to try to project illusions or teleport or move a little box or do anything at all. I couldn’t. I felt a complete dick.

Then they sent in a Setari. He was about twenty-five, reminded me strikingly of Johnny Depp, and had the nicest smile I’ve ever seen. Ever. He told me his name was Maze (or Mase, maybe – all the Taren words I write down are serious guesses as to spelling – the alphabet doesn’t quite correlate to the letters I’m used to). He lifted each of the metal blocks in turn using telekinesis, though he was only able to make it halfway through the row. Then he had me stand next to him, and told me to do exactly what I did when Nenna jumped us. I told him I didn’t do anything, just stood there while she held on to my hand, and he told me to do that then, and held on to my hand while I tried not to look incredibly embarrassed, or to think how much Nenna would want to be in my place.

Maze began lifting the blocks again. And made it about two thirds through them, and was quite wide-eyed by the time he was done. I would be too, since the last few blocks were bigger than school demountables. They brought a different Setari in, a very beautiful woman around the same age, her hair in a long braid. Her name was Zee, and she did the same thing, except she started out wide-eyed.

After this was endless, boring variations of hand-holding and block-lifting. They found that whatever it is I’m doing keeps working for a little while, even if they let go of my hand, and decided I’m a new ability: a magnifier or an amplifier. Not nearly as fun as having psychic abilities of my own, but I guess it’s more good than bad that they were all excited and disconcerted. Back in my room now; time for kindergarten.

Tuesday, January 8

Suckitudinous

They decided to expand my interface. Apparently all the Setari have an interface network all over their bodies, instead of just on one side of their head, because it increases their link to the Ena and thus their strength. They gave me a bunch of hypoinjections – even in the soles of my feet! – and then told me what they’d done. And then switched off my interface so that even my language tool went away.

Tare nearly had a Casszilla incident. They could have at least pretended to ask. I went hot and dizzy and said really rude, overloud things in English and only just stopped myself from shouting because I had to work at not crying in front of them. This was horrible enough the first time.

Friday, January 11

O.o

Cannot begin to describe how awful I feel. Contemplating vengeance of the direst sort.

Monday, January 14

For the ones that are still alive

Well, they nearly killed me this time. I’ve been in the infirmary for the past few days on life support. My expanded interface really expanded and I started having convulsions. Apparently. I don’t remember too much of it.

I still feel awful; I can barely sit up to write this. It’ll be a few days before I’m anywhere close to not-ill.

Friday, January 18

Apologies

Nenna sent me an email. She sent it a couple of days ago but my interface hasn’t been on. And when they turned it on, they only gave me my language tool, kindergarten and bare-bones basic room functions. Ista Tremmar tells me that I’ll be given access back after further assessment, and that I can write to Nenna, but I can’t explain anything to her, or tell her much about what it’s like here. Then she gave me a big file of rules to read, but my head wouldn’t be up to it even if it was in English. The interface has stopped expanding but I’m still horribly headachy.

Anyway, Nenna doesn’t hate me. She apologised to me. So now we’re apologising to each other. I told her what little I guess I can – her father’s probably able to tell her more anyway – and promised to translate the lyrics to the songs when I can.

It was so good to get her email.

Saturday, January 19

Blacksuits

Another test session today with Zee. We did basic lifting. Or, rather, I stood around feeling tired and extraneous while she lifted things. Then there was another woman, Mara, who was talkative and had wonderfully sproingy curly hair. She and Zee and Maze are all from First Squad: they’re the oldest of the Setari, one of the three original combat squads created from children trained intensively to deal with monsters from the Ena.

After they decided the early results were promising, the Taren government vastly expanded the Setari program, and now there’s a dozen six-person squads, most of them five to seven Earth-years younger than First Squad. There’s also a lot of people in training who haven’t yet qualified for active duty on the squads. The Setari program has been running for 60 years (twenty Earth years).

Mara explained all this to me while Zee was working out if being any distance from me effected the temporary increase with her strength. Mara is primarily a Speed talent, but she can also make a glowing light which curls about like a kind of cutting whip. I made her even faster, which she was pleased about, but something about how the whip worked really shocked them. It came out in a different colour and they spent ages studying it and being confused. Then I was put back in my box. I hate being a lab rat.

More Labrattery

After a few hours I was recalled for more experiments with First Squad – all of them this time. There’s four girls – Zee, Mara, Alay, Ketzaren – and two guys – Maze and Lohn. All in their mid-twenties, all wearing their black uniforms and looking very fit and smart and…worn. I didn’t like to ask if all the years fighting monsters ran together for them, or if they ever get to stop.

The uniform the Setari wear is very interesting. It’s flexible and stretchy: solid stuff but not so unwieldy as a wetsuit, and – it’s hard to think what it reminds me of. Expensive sport shoes, with their airholes for breathing and all the extra stitching and complexity. It’s very tight-fitting and all-covering – the neck part goes right up to the chin and the arms to fingerless gloves, and the soft boots seem to be built in too, and it looks like it must be a pain to take on and off. It’s far more layered and complex than the spandex suits of superheroes, but with a cape and a big logo I bet they could pass.

There’s something unspeakably tedious about standing about while people act worried and excited, and you don’t really understand why. Especially when they started communicating on channels I didn’t have access to instead of speaking, which really brought back the whole "you’re an experimental subject" feel again.

Maze, Zee and Mara – all of First Squad – are relaxed and friendly, though, which helps. They talked me through some of the implications of the fact that I’m not just enhancing some of their powers, but changing them. It really increases the danger. The accident with Nenna was an example of that – it’s possible that I didn’t simply increase her strength, but changed the coordinates of her jump as well. They were thinking of it only in terms of an overshoot before, but now they think it was a distortion, and that means that anyone trying to teleport me anywhere would be at huge risk.

I don’t seem to distort everything though. Or, at least, it’s not noticeable if I am. But Mara’s Light whip has a more melting effect when I enhance her, and Alay’s Illusion casting goes totally weird. Ketzaren felt dizzy when she tried to make me levitate and Lohn – who gives a good imitation of a Star Wars blaster shooting beams of Light – made a burning wall instead. There was a big pause after that, where First Squad stood about looking disconcerted and listening to someone I couldn’t hear, who I guess was having conniptions.

The one thing they did establish is that I consistently distort. So Lohn’s beams always became a wall, and Mara’s Light whip was always the same. They cheered up after that. They’re still going to have to go carefully working out just what effect I have, but consistently weird is a lot better than randomly weird.

And now I’m back in my box waiting for the next test. I think it’s the fact that the door won’t open to me that bothers me most.

Monday, January 21

Still alive still

I spent the beginning of the day translating song lyrics for Nenna. I am improving. My grammar is terrible, and I had to write a huge amount of explanatory notes to make half the concepts remotely understandable, but it showed me how far I’d come in being able to communicate. Talking to First Squad between testing sessions has been helping. I was feeling very proud of myself, even if I could tell it was a botched job, and had just mailed it off to her when I was brought down for another testing session.

This was more of the same, just working on the limits of me enhancing people. So they had two, then three of the Setari touching me at the same time to see how many people I could enhance at once.

And down I went. I never used to pass out on frequent occasions. I’m not epileptic, and I never had a fit till I came to this planet. Until now they weren’t sure if I was being physically stressed by whatever I’m doing to enhance people. And, well, now they know.

They’re getting more anxious about killing me, I think. The greysuits, that is, and whoever it is giving orders over the interface. I don’t see these at all, just First Squad and greysuits.

First Squad were very upset, and Zee and Maze came to the infirmary after I’d woken up again and we all apologised to each other for nothing which was our own fault. They don’t seem bothered by the tests, they just think they should have somehow predicted what was going to happen and prevented it.

Change of pace

Sa Lents came to see me for the first time since Nenna’s accident. He didn’t act like he blamed me or anything, but it was still uncomfortable. No experiments today, just talking with Sa Lents, trying to describe Earth’s history.

My sleep schedule is totally messed up. The lack of proper day and night, and the way the people I’ve been working with all seem to be on different shifts, really messes with me. Their breakfast is my dinner and so forth.

Tuesday, January 22

Zan

Today I was assigned to a girl called Zan. She’s from Twelfth Squad and is another telekinetic. She’s short and very serious and has blonde-brown hair which is very fine and cut into a soft and wispy bob. Quite pretty golden-brown eyes.

They’ve decided to postpone further experiments with me because they think I’m too worn down. Being half-starved on Muina and then that bad cold and then the broken collarbone and all these bad reactions I’ve had are adding up. Even though I’ve had regular meals and not really done anything since I was rescued, I’ve not put on much weight and certainly aren’t fit. They want me to get healthy and they’re going to confine the tests purely to Zan’s Telekinesis for a while. She only has the one psychic talent, with no secondary talents at all.

She’s also going to train me. In some kind of judo, which is not exactly something I’m keen on. Hitting people is…just not me. They want to study the effect of prolonged exposure to Zan, and at the same time make me a bit more capable of surviving, should they ever decide it’s a good idea to use me in combat. I really am a potential weapon to these people.

It’s hard to tell what Zan thinks of all this. She’s what Mum would call scrrrrupulously correct and even though she’s trained all her life to be an incredibly deadly monster fighter, she didn’t act as if there was anything odd about teaching some unco beginner how to stand and how to step back and forward over and over again. Must be dull as hell for her.

She did do the wide-eyed thing when they tested how I enhanced her. By herself she’s a lot stronger than Maze. With me, she can lift all the test blocks at once.

Wednesday, January 23

Lab Rat One

I spent all of today having test after test in the medical labs. Ista Tremmar is polite and all, but she’s still inclined to leave me sitting on an examining table for an hour while they talk about me. If I didn’t have the interface kindergarten to keep me occupied I’d go mad.

Maybe that’s what Zan does during our exercises – zones out and reads her email. If I ask her questions, she answers in the briefest possible way, and she never asks me anything. I miss Nenna’s chatter so much. I miss that she treated me as a person as well as an exciting curiosity.

When I was delivered back to my box today I drew a rat on all my clothes, and wrote Lab Rat One underneath it, making a little logo for my official designation on this world.

Today I particularly miss Alyssa. I’ve only known Alyssa a few years, but she’s the only person I really tell things to. I hadn’t realised how important that was to me.

Thursday, January 24

Attitude adjustment

Strange how going around wearing my lab rat logo makes me feel so much better. This morning’s session with Zan went well because I felt less like I was helplessly doing what I was told, and was, well, doing what I was told while wearing an ironic comment about it.

We’re still working on stances. Step forward, step backward, over and over again, very controlled. I concentrated more on it this time, deciding I at least may as well do the best I can, even if I know that I’m never going to be really good at this kind of stuff, and will only be laughable in comparison to athletic people who have been training since they were five. I’m going to have a go at cracking Zan, too – at least get her to treat me a little less like an assignment. I don’t care if she takes a teacher/student attitude, even though she can’t be more than a year older than me, but I want some kind of interaction, some kind of response.

I’m really curious about her now, about if she’s so serious and unsmiling all the time, and why. First Squad was a lot more open and friendly. And I know I’m not going to get a chance to work out Zan if I’m all sullen and unwilling. I mightn’t have a whole lot of power and independence in this place, but I can control the way I act and that will make me feel better.

I’ve never thought of myself as a typical Australian – that whole laconic and stoic thing – but I’m trying to use that attitude to cope with here. To copy Nick, who is always so calm and unfussed by everything that the world throws at him. Not super-optimistic or unbelievably Pollyanna, but he sets a great balance between dealing with the bad stuff and enjoying all the good bits. Nick would never lose sight of the fact that I’m no longer starving on Muina.

Nick’s an ex-step-cousin. His dad was married to my Aunt Sue when we were younger, and we saw a lot of each other – all the family holidays and so forth. His dad started being an ass, so my aunt divorced him, and Nick does a lot of making sure he doesn’t go completely off the rails. We still live in the same area, though, and Mum and Aunt Sue keep including Nick in holidays as if we’re still related and I see him at inter-school events. He’s not quite one of those incredibly popular people like HM, but he has a relaxed focus on what he thinks is fun which makes him really great to be around. Nick would be far better able to cope with being here.

Friday, January 25

Baby steps

I’ve started looking forward to my sessions with Zan. Not because I like the exercise particularly, but because I’m actually doing something. Medical examinations are the worst – sitting around for ages, holding still for the benefit of the scanners, or getting blood samples taken.

Since I’m waiting around all the time, either in my box or being examined, I’m damn lucky I have something to do, but kindergarten is keeping me sane and driving me nuts at the same time. I want back the access I had before my accident. I can’t watch any of the entertainment channels, or even try to read books longer than twenty words. I asked about getting access back, and they said I had to reach certain qualification levels. In other words, no play until I’m out of school. It’s obviously an attempt to push me to improve my language skills, but, heck, I’m sure I’d learn lots of useful words watching that silly singing Setari show Nenna liked so much.

Training, even though it’s repetitive and I tire quickly, is like being let out of a cage. While Zan is correct and distant, she’s also patient, and I think it makes training some idiot stray better for her if I try. I do feel a complete gangling gawk beside her; she’s so small and fine-boned. But quite deadly. I saw her practicing when I came in this morning, and was wholly dismayed at the thought of ever trying to move like that, but it seems she’s aiming to train me to dodge, rather than try and hit things. And to be fitter and wheeze less.

Saturday, January 26

Speed trial

I hit a round of tests in my interface kindergarten, and was on the back foot from the start since tests trigger a test environment, and it’s almost like being in a darkened room inside your own head. I could just see the real room. I hadn’t realised how thoroughly the interface could impact my senses, and while Ista Tremmar told me later that the interface is restricted from making people completely blind and deaf for safety reasons, that did not reassure me in the slightest.

The tests were timed, which made them incredibly hard for me, since I barely have a basic command of the language, and it takes me too long to understand exactly what the question is before trying to formulate the answer. So of course I ran out of time and only finished the maths test. I aced maths, but failed the tests overall. And now I seem to be repeating kindergarten, which sucks, since the questions are incredibly easy. I don’t know if I can get better at this language before I die of boredom.

Looking forward to my session with Zan immensely, because it doesn’t matter how badly I speak.

Sunday, January 27

Hands off

Today’s practice didn’t go quite as scheduled.

I was frustrated over failing the tests yesterday, but stepping back and forth is pretty calming, and so is Zan. I was just thinking that maybe I should call her Zen instead when she stopped stepping back and forth and turned to look up.

The practice room is small and bare, with a floor of padded mats and a high ceiling with a window upstairs in one wall so people can watch. Ista Tremmar had been up there earlier, but when Zan looked there were a half-dozen Setari. The most noticeable was a tall blonde guy at the front, his hands raised in fists against the glass as if he’d just hit it. He was glaring down at Zan like he wanted to hit her instead. Then he stormed out of the chamber, most of the other Setari following him.

Two of them stayed, and I was caught up looking at the girl first because I don’t think I’ve seen anyone that gorgeous outside model magazines. She had that antelope look, but athletic rather than stick-thin. Even at that distance I could see her eyes were very black, with big irises and long lashes. Her skin was creamy bronze and her hair was unreal – these two spirals curling down past her ribs. She was almost as unsmiling as Zan, but I think her attitude was mainly curiosity. Not angry, anyway. The guy with her looked enough like her to be her brother (though no long pigtails, heh), and I didn’t recognise him until he tilted his head a particular way to talk, and I realised he was one of the two Setari who had found me on Muina.

Just then Zan told me to go stand in the corner, which totally pissed me off. Even though I’d figured out that there was a yelling match coming, I’m not a dog to be told to sit and stay and get put out of the way. But I went, and just in time, as the door to the hall opened and the blond guy stormed in. There were a bunch of other Setari looking in the door at us, but they stayed there.

"This is it?" the guy was yelling (well, in Taren, you get the idea). "This is your special assignment? The reason we’re all on downtime is you’re playing with some profanity stray?"

Swear words aren’t in my language tool. I can tell it’s a swear word, but not what it means, so it’s like my head says profanity whenever someone swears. I find that funny and annoying at the same time. I need to find someone who is willing to teach me what they mean.

I knew enough of Zan by this time to not be surprised at her complete lack of reaction to some really buff guy standing over her and shouting. She just said: "Stand down," in a curt little voice and went and picked up one of the towels we’d brought in with us.

I’m not so good at not reacting, so when the blond guy turned toward me, I was glad Zan had stuck me in the corner. And I’m pretty sure I did the open-mouthed gaping thing when he suddenly lifted up and was slammed into one of the walls, for all I knew perfectly well Zan was a telekinetic.

"I said, Stand down, Lenton," Zan said, and, wow, totally cold voice. She wasn’t smiling or frowning, but her eyes had narrowed and I decided then that it would never be a good idea to piss Zan off.

The Lenton guy didn’t take the hint though, and looked really offended and told Zan to put him down before he made her regret it. He was calling her "Namara", which is her surname. All the Setari seem to call each other by their surnames. Zan calls me "Devlin" and I generally avoid calling her by either name because I think it sounds stupid to call someone you see every day by her surname. Even First Squad seem to do it most of the time. I think – hope – it’s some kind of on-duty thing and that they’re more human to each other when they’re not being all proper.

Before the shouting match turned into a bigger mess all the Setari except Zan, who was probably expecting it, paused in clear reaction to suddenly getting a message in their heads. Zan put the Lenton guy down and though he glared at her, he strode off without another word.

"Get changed," Zan said to me, glancing back up at the observation room. The two Setari there were still watching, but turned and left when she just stood looking at them.

"Everyone’s really competitive?" I asked. "Or just no manners?" Except, given my grammar and how slow I say stuff, it was more like "Compete all much? Manners no?" I really hate sounding so stupid. Yoda with a lobotomy.

Zan didn’t reply. She never responds to questions like that, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to push her, so I went and changed out of the loose training jumpsuit into my knee-length cargo-style pants and a sleeveless t-shirt featuring my lab rat logo. I really did draw it on every shirt I considered mine – not my school uniform, but the clothes I’d bought with Nenna and her mother. Zan put on her black uniform, which she manages in a surprisingly short amount of time for something so skin-tight.

Next was the big testing room, where every Setari in the complex had obviously been ordered to assemble. Maze had told me there were twelve active squads of six people so the rows six people deep showed me who was in which squad. They left spaces for the people who weren’t there – three missing teams and a few random gaps. And then they brought me into channel and I saw that even a few of the missing people were there: attending the meeting through their interfaces rather than in person. Little see-through holographic pictures of them filled in some of the empty spots. Lohn from First Squad and Zan were the only ones out of place, over to one side near me.

Since Maze was at the first spot of the first set, it was pretty easy to guess that the squad captains stood at front. The team next to him was around the same age – mid-twenties – and everyone else late teens or perhaps twenty. The gap left by Zan in Twelfth Squad was the first spot, which meant she was their captain. News to me. The blond guy was next spot back and was trying to look super-correct, though his face was tense and set. The girl and guy I’d seen in the observation room were the captains of Third and Fourth Squad respectively.

Even the people in charge had shown up as interface projections: the first time I’d seen any of them. They wore blue, which I guess means officer. No-one was chatting, or doing anything but looking straight ahead. And me the only person not in uniform, sticking out like a sore thumb.

Another interface projection appeared. A woman, compact and stern, her hair clipped really short, with a hint of grey in it. She had the really black, almond eyes of the observation-room girl and guy. The Setari all saluted her – they do a fist to shoulder sort of salute – so it was pretty easy to tell she was in charge.

I can re-watch what happens next, and have a few times, because it occurred to me I could record everything. It’s really weird to be able to do that, and I’m glad they’ve not taken the ability away, since this is a scene it’s interesting to play over. So far as I can tell, I can’t play the recording for anyone who doesn’t have the right security level. It makes me wonder what security level I have.

"This is a level 5 classified briefing," said the woman. "As you are aware, Fourth Squad recovered a displaced person from Muina during last month’s mission. Namara and Kettara will demonstrate why this has become important."

Zan went first, turning and looking at the big metal blocks. "Current strength," she said, extra clearly, and lifted the largest block she was capable of managing alone. Then she glanced at me, totally giving orders just by turning her eyes in my direction. I was hard put not to roll my own, but obediently stuck my hand on her shoulder, which she’d suggested as less restrictive than hand-holding.

"Enhanced strength."

I had turned to watch their faces when she lifted all the blocks. Only First Squad didn’t react, since they’d seen all this before. Most of them did the eyes-going-really-wide thing. A few shifted from their spots, or were openly astonished or upset, but then went back to stony-faced as quickly as they could manage.

Lohn came forward next, and said: "Intense Light projection," and shot a few of his burning beams into a target. He gave me a little smile and when I put my hand on his shoulder said: "Same skill, enhanced."

The burning wall freaked the Setari out a good deal more than an extra-strength Zan. A lot of them exchanged glances before they went back to being correct.

"Subject Devlin’s effect on skill users is still under investigation. As you have observed, it is not simply a matter of increased potency. In addition, multiple simultaneous enhancements causes her lethal systemic shock. Until further notice, the subject has been assigned to Namara. Under no circumstances initiate physical contact with the subject unless instructed. Dismissed."

The woman in the blue uniform vanished, as did most of the other watchers. The Setari squad captains, although they were probably dying to give Zan the third degree, sent their squads straight out the door and then most of them left as well, though a few stopped at the door to talk to each other. Maze came across to me, Zan and Lohn and told me I did well. I pointed out that I don’t actually do anything, but he said at least I wasn’t doing anything consistently and he and Lohn grinned at each other and talked about what would have happened if the enhancement hadn’t worked. First Squad is so much more human than the rest of the Setari.

And then the leader of Fourth Squad came over. I was wondering if I should thank Fourth Squad for rescuing me, but if anything this guy was even more unsmiling than Zan is. As an added bonus he seemed to be staring at my chest, which was really amazingly uncomfortable until he said: "Experimental animal?"

Maze thought he was being insulting, and said "Rue-el," in a warning tone, but stopped, probably because he saw my expression.

"You can read English?" I asked – in English – completely disbelieving.

"Don’t neglect the psychological aspects," the Fourth Squad captain said to Zan and turned away without another glance at me. Though he added, "It’s not inapposite," over his shoulder as he walked away to where the Third Squad captain was waiting.

"How he know what say?" I asked Maze, who was taking his turn chest-staring. "Earth contact after all yes?"

"You’ve written Experimental Animal on your shirt?" Maze asked, clearly upset.

Zan answered my question: "See Rue-el’s primary talents are sight-based. He was reading the symbol, not the words."

Psychic psychic powers, in other words. And Zan was standing stiff and still, with her face so set that I couldn’t miss that she was mortified. Because she’d had no idea what my shirt said, and the Fourth Squad captain had dressed her down for that, even if it was just with a single sentence.

There wasn’t much I could do to fix that, but I did try to explain. "In Australia – in my culture – important able laugh at self. I–" I tugged at my shirt, then read out the words in English and the closest Taren translation. "Lab Rat One. Is true, is what am me here. Pretend not, that stupid. This–" I shrugged. "Cope mechanism. Sarcasm. Make me feel better wear."

"But it’s not–" Maze wasn’t getting any less upset.

"I kept in box. Take out for tests. What else call it?"

Maze grimaced, but Lohn laughed. "You have to admit her point. So the people of your world think it’s important to laugh at themselves? That’s an idea I could get along with. But, Maze, no-one will be laughing if we miss that shuttle, so get a move on."

He dashed off with a wave, and since Maze obviously couldn’t think of an argument he sighed. "Let me know if you need anything, Caszandra. Although I suppose it must seem like it, your status is not that." He shot the picture on my shirt a grumpy look, nodded at Zan, and strode off after Lohn.

Zan just said: "I’ll escort you back" and took me to my room and left me here.

Being able to record everything you see and hear certainly makes it easier to write down a conversation, though my translation of what they said – and what I was trying to say – is probably not that accurate. I hadn’t noticed before, but First Squad all call me Caszandra, not Cassandra. Taren is a very zeddy language.

Writing this down took hours, but it’s given me plenty of translation practice and time to try and work out which of the three – Maze, Lohn or the Fourth Squad captain – that Zan likes enough to make her mind so much what happened today.

Monday, January 28

Roof

This morning started as business as usual with training. Zan, rather than the greensuits, has been collecting me from my room. We get changed in a side room which has a stock of freshly laundered training outfits and then we do a lot of stepping backward and forward and now side-to-side. Zan had gone back to being imperturbable, and I wasn’t in the mood to push her, so I was really surprised when, after we’d changed back, she said: "I’ve been given leave to escort you around the facility, if there’s any parts you wish to see."

"Can go outside?" I asked immediately.

I could see that surprised her. People really just don’t go outside much, on this planet. "It’s night phase at the moment."

"That bad thing?"

"Well…" She shrugged, and led me to the elevator that led to the corridor that led to the walkway that led to the quickest elevator to the roof. It’s not nearly so huge as Unara, but the KOTIS building mound is still pretty damn big. It can’t all be Setari facilities, even with all the not-yet Setari who are being trained somewhere.

It was very cold and windy on the bit of roof we ended up on. It feels even more like being on the side of a big mountain than going to Unara’s roof did. Unara’s more an endless blocky roundness, while the Institute is closer to the water and you can really see the down. But you could also see up since the sky was clear for once and so I found a convenient edge and sat down and stared up looking for any constellations I recognised. I would like to at least be able to stare in the direction of Earth.

"This is similar to your world?" Zan asked after a while. Even she can’t just sit and not say anything forever.

"Not my part." I supposed Scotland might look like that, if you covered it with buildings. "Australia – big sky, red dirt, blue sea, lots beaches, huge empty inland. Deserts and tropical forests and…harsh, thirsty country. And then flood." I shrugged. "Out here because never not gone outside ever. Walk to school. Go to beach. Garden. What you do when not being Setari?"

I’d asked her before, but she’d ignored the question. This time Zan sighed, ever-so-softly. "If you want to talk, go inside out of this cold. I’m supposed to be watching your health."

But, of course, as soon as we got back inside someone called her away. And it’s back to kindergarten in a box.

Tuesday, January 29

Bored Spitless

I suck at learning languages. Other than English, the only one I even begin to know is sign language, and even with that I spend a lot of time spelling words out because I don’t know the sign. It annoys me, because I have a good memory, but there’s a difference between remembering and knowing something, I guess.

Despite having an entire dictionary in my head cheating for me when I listen to Taren, I’m struggling to know the words. I know yes and no and hello. And new words like Muina and Setari seem to have sunk in far better than bed or morning. Which is all just a whiny lead-up to saying I figured out how to trigger those interface tests and still can’t pass because it takes me too long to phrase answers. I need multiple choice answer tests! What kind of planet gives kindergarteners tests this hard?

I can only do the tests once a day, so now I’m sitting around hoping Zan will show up and still be willing to talk. And feeling a bit annoyed with her for not coming back yesterday. And wondering what her other duties are beyond babying me. It looked to me like she doesn’t get on with the rest of her squad, or at least not that obnoxious blond guy.

I wonder what they’d do if I drew patterns on the walls? Everything on this planet is so undecorated and white because they use interface skins as their decoration. I’ve been trying to work out if the buildings are made of the same whitestone as the buildings on Muina. They don’t look anywhere near as simple, of course, but they feel the same to touch.

*sulks*

Bleh. Instead of training, I had medical examinations this afternoon. More scans and blood tests and seeing how my heart is going and dull and uncomfortable as hell.

One thing, though – I don’t think any of the Setari have told anyone else what my Lab Rat symbol means. At least, Ista Tremmar didn’t pay any more attention to it than last time, and wasn’t giving me psych tests or anything.

Wednesday, January 30

Tactics

Zan likes classical music. I should have guessed: it fits in with her being all serious and proper. They call classical music orchestral music (tennanam anam). The instrument Zan plays is called a Tyu and looks and sounds to me a lot like a zither, but is larger than the zither they had in the music room at primary school – about the size of an A3 sheet of paper, but much thicker of course – and has softer strings which she plucks. It’s made of wood, which is super rare on Tare. I think it’s probably rare to have an actual musical instrument, as well, rather than playing a virtual something in a virtual space.

I was just as interested in her rooms. I had been picturing all the Setari stuck in little boxes like mine, but Zan had a small apartment: one bedroom, but with a separate lounge-kitchen combo and a study nook thing and a larger bathroom than mine – bathtub! I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised. You can apply for adult rights at 50 (almost 17) here, and the Setari are a few steps above an ordinary sort of soldier. Keeping them permanently in barracks or whatever probably wouldn’t have worked.

Anyway, I thought Zan’s apartment was wonderful. She’s decorated it in muted shades of green and blue (the public space, that is) with curling patterns which look a bit like ferns that shift and wind about. And she has a cat! A cat like that screensaver cat that drops down from the top of your screen and wanders about, except this one wanders about Zan’s entire apartment, and is blue-green to blend in with the walls. You can sort of pat it, even, because your interface will pretend like you’re touching something. I asked if there were real cats on Tare and she said a few brought from a planet called Kolar. Only the really rich can possibly have actual pets.

I’m not under any illusion that Zan suddenly wants to be friends. She’s been given me as an assignment, and she still acts exactly like I’m an assignment, just that the assignment has been expanded to my mental health as well as physical fitness and dodging. I don’t know whether I like her or not, beyond that she’s the only person on this freaking planet that I see on a near-daily basis. I can’t remember hanging out with any super-serious girls in the past, let alone someone who is part of the military and kills for a living. She makes me curious though.

After this we went and had another stepping session, and I waited till she was escorting me back to my room before I asked her again: "Setari competitive why?" And when she paused, since this was definitely not the sort of question she was likely to answer, I added: "Your squad, why unhappy, holiday?"

"The Setari don’t compete directly," Zan said eventually. "But how we perform effects privileges, which assignments we are given, and even whether we remain on active duty. Fighting in the Ena is greatly preferred to the more basic duty which is usual on Tare, and not simply because being in the Ena makes us feel…twice as alive. Twelfth Squad had only just been activated for Ena assignments, but were transferred to training routines, and are very disappointed."

"Mostly fight Ena, not planet?"

"The whole concept of the Setari is to prevent anything from the Ena reaching this world. And to find a way to fix the fractures which have made it so easy for the walls around this world to be crossed." She looked even more than ordinarily serious. "The numbers increase every year and the fractures are widening. Working on Tare, it’s just clean-up unless there’s a major outbreak. The war is beyond this world."

That was a good deal more dramatic than I’d been expecting. Where I’m going to be placed in this war is something too large to think about.

Thursday, January 31

A proper history lesson

I passed the stupid interface test! Only just – I still didn’t finish a lot of the questions, but I got almost all the ones I did answer right. So I now have a new year of school to plough through. Still no entertainment channels or anything, but a small library of children’s textbooks, which is good. I much prefer being able to freely read the books than to sit through the pre-set lessons and their snippets of information. A thorough browse has given me a lot more background and a better explanation of just what happened on Muina and what the situation on Tare is now.

So, whatever it was happened on Muina happened thousands of Taren years ago. They’re pretty imprecise about exactly how long ago it was, because they went through a really rough and chaotic first few decades on Tare, so don’t have a very good written record. Kolar is the other main planet which properly remembers being from Muina, but its early records are no better than Tare’s. The best I can make out, the evacuation from Muina was between 1500 and 2000 Earth years ago. So ha! to the idea of Earth having been populated by people from Muina – the Egyptian pyramids are over 3000 years old and that barely scratches the surface of Earth’s archaeological and fossil record. I guess it is possible that some Muinans came to Earth long before that, but we definitely weren’t part of the evacuation dispersal. I never believed that, no matter how similar I am to them genetically. It still makes vastly more sense to me for the Muinans to have originally come from Earth, especially because Tare’s population also reflects some of Earth’s races.

Lantar doesn’t refer to the entire population of Muina, either, but to a psychic ruling caste which caused the disaster that made Muina uninhabitable. Back then the Ionoth monsters were only an issue for these ruling Lantar (Lantarens?) when they travelled between planets. It’s not clear why they were travelling between planets, but it was common enough that they started a huge planet-wide project to make it easier: creating a little network of permanently aligned wormholes. The result of this was like if you decided to stop earthquakes in California by nailing the tectonic plates together: everything started to rip apart around the nails.

The tearing allowed things from the Ena to more easily get to Muina, where they liked to throw themselves on people and eat them. The Lantarens couldn’t immediately undo what they’d done because the places where they’d constructed the main supports of their interplanetary superhighway had been flooded with too many Ionoth. So they built these things called Ddura – the massives the Setari are so interested in investigating – which are artificial Ionoth whose job was to clear out Ionoth from the supports and from Muina. But they immediately lost control of the Ddura, and the situation on Muina began spiralling into chaos: whole villages and cities of people inexplicably dropping dead, and more and more Ionoth coming through and eating people.

All the Lantarens on Muina had a big teleconference (hehe!) and decided they had to leave Muina. They couldn’t all manage to go to the same place, and it doesn’t sound like they wanted to either. There were some who stayed behind on Muina, but no-one’s ever found any trace of them, so they were probably killed.

If you stay too long on Muina, something comes and eats you, or you drop dead. I’m glad I didn’t know all this while I was busy boiling wool.

Stepping it up

The medics have decided I’m more or less recovered, so Zan says we’ll have two sessions of training tomorrow. So funny to be excited about exercising. I wonder if the Setari have to earn TV privileges as well.

I asked Zan what the Ena looked like, and she said that it’s incredibly varied, but that the nearest space looked just like Tare, except without the people. It’s a shadow of this world. Now that’s freaky.

February

Friday, February 1

Frabjous

This morning was routine. Though my lessons with Zan are getting a bit more complex, it’s still repeating a set of movements over and over again.

But Zan didn’t deliver me back to my room afterwards. Instead we went to lunch in a smallish canteen. It seems to be a Setari-specific place, though I think the kitchen handles more than just this one room.

It’s funny how your aspirations change after being locked in a room for – how long has it been? – nearly a month since Nenna was hurt. It makes small things like eating in a very plain canteen so exciting. Being able to pick from a couple of options for my meal instead of having food delivered by a pinksuit under guard made me feel almost human again. The illusion of choice.

Of course anything, even sitting in a room reliving kindergarten, is better than starving and alone. Annoying as this place can be, I’m still glad to have been rescued.

The other Setari in the room weren’t anyone I particularly recognised, though I guess they’d all been there for the demonstrate-what-the-stray-can-do session. They pretended not to look at me, and didn’t bother us. It’s hard to know what they’d think of me – a walking instant power-up that they’ve been told to stay away from.

After lunch, I was expecting more martial arts practice, but instead we went down to a different changing room and Zan sent me into one of the shower rooms and told me to braid my hair up and strip and get into the shower. And when I did, wondering what was going on, black goop sprayed out of the walls at me and that was enough to make me jump back and want out. And then it started wriggling. I sometimes forget that these people use nanotechnology. I ended up with a light swimsuit, sturdier than those I’m used to, and going all the way to the knees and elbows. Thinner than the Setari uniform, but I’m starting to understand how Zan gets changed so quickly.

After I’d recovered from my minor heart attack, we went into the next room and it was this HUGE pool. A big square, maybe forty by forty metres, but incredibly deep, with this underwater obstacle course, all tunnels and circles and things. I couldn’t even see the bottom.

"This is something I need practice in, as well," Zan said, watching my disbelieving expression. "The requirement for water manoeuvres only came in two years ago, when some of the nearest spaces became flooded. The medics recommended this to increase your overall fitness, and it will prepare you in case they do decide to use you in the Ena."

"Not that good at holding breath," I said, extremely dubiously. I figured I could make the top couple of tunnels and tubes, and that would be it.

"There’s breathers for the deep work. First will be surface swimming. Are you taught swimming at all on your world?"

I gave her a funny look, then dived in and swam across the pool and back. I was a little more out of breath than I expected when I reached her, due to my various medical dramas. But I love swimming. I’m not Ian Thorpe, but water sports are one of the things I’ve always been reasonably good at.

"If ever go my world," I told her, treading water. "Teach you how to surf."

I’m a better swimmer than Zan is. And they don’t use the freestyle stroke, just breaststroke, so she asked me to teach her. And we’re doing swimming practice every afternoon until further notice. Today was a great day.

Saturday, February 2

Ructions

Zan is now teaching me how to fall. Or how to throw myself on padded mats without too much bruising or unnecessary giggling. I find it hard to take seriously, and no matter what else I think or feel about Zan, I have to admire her patience. I think that it’s causing her a lot of trouble to babysit me, too, unless the Setari are just plain nasty to each other out of habit.

The nastiness came out during this afternoon’s swimming session. Zan’s picking up freestyle quickly (Australian crawl, really, but everyone I know calls it freestyle), but it’ll take her a bit to really get into it, so we were having a race with breaststroke. I’m okay with short races, but if I try and do more than a couple of laps I run out of pep.

But I can beat her in a short dash, and was terribly pleased about it. Problem was, so were the people watching us. Three Setari, two guys and a girl, and one of the guys was standing right on the edge of the pool where we touched. Gave me quite a fright, looking up and finding all this blacksuited leg and chest. I pushed back from the edge, just as Zan reached it, but they were more interested in her than me anyway.

I don’t know if Zan had managed to figure out they were there before she looked up, but from what I could see of her face, she didn’t act surprised.

"Truly, Namara, I’m starting to feel embarrassed for you," said the guy. He had an amazing voice, really beautiful, and so wasted on such a putz. "Bad enough your squad’s been pulled off rotation so you can demonstrate infant-level combat skills, but now you’re actually being outdone by a stray."

Zan reminds me of a drowned kitten when she’s wet. Her hair sleeks down and makes her eyes look really big. The guy was so tall, and Zan being down in the water must have felt at a real disadvantage. But all she did was move to one side, haul herself easily out, and go pick up one of the towels.

"Can I help you with something, Kajal?" she asked, once she’d dried her face.

"Not swimming, obviously." The guy was irritated that he’d not managed to get a reaction out of Zan, but made out he wasn’t bothered, laughing. "Lenton’s chances are looking better each day."

The Setari girl standing behind him touched his arm. "It’s an unfortunate situation," she said, in a much more reasonable tone. "Twelfth Squad may have lost out on this rotation altogether, and Lenton does need to be taught to keep his temper. Worse still, I doubt the stray will be assigned to Twelfth Squad, if they do use it in the Ena. It’s very unfair on you."

I was glad I’d kept moving away, was at least ten metres from the edge. Not only was the girl enjoying a few sly digs at Zan while pretending to be nice, but she’d called me it! I’m not totally incapable of understanding the nuances of spoken Taren. Stupid idiots were acting like I was a performing animal, not a person.

It occurred to me then that I no longer had the function which displays all the names of people over their heads. A full month after Sa Lents showed me how to use it, and I’d forgotten all about it since the accident. I don’t see what they achieved by making it so I couldn’t use it, but it was probably related to me losing almost all the other public functions. I was able to call up the recorded memory of the Setari briefing, though, and work out that the Kajal guy was captain of the Fifth Squad, and the girl was captain of the Seventh. The other guy was also from the Seventh Squad. What they were trying to achieve with all the dick waving I couldn’t guess.

At least they left after that, though another person showed up as Zan was turning back toward me. I was too far away to hear what she said, since her voice was soft, but Zan smiled at her, and then shrugged. So she’s not totally without friends. I practiced swimming underwater for a couple of minutes, till Zan told me that was enough for the day. It’s going to take a while to get used to people being able to talk in my head when I’m upside-down in a swimming pool.

I didn’t bug her with questions while she escorted me back, didn’t really feel equal to it. Was even glad to be back in my room so I could get in the shower and cry myself sick.

I do almost all my crying in the shower. I’m still not sure how much they monitor me while I’m in my room, and I’m really hoping that I get at least a little privacy. The shower lets me pretend I’m hiding the bad days. This was worse than usual. It’s going to be my birthday soon, and Mum had promised to organise a family and friends party at our house, and then Nick, Alyssa and I had permission to go out to actual nightclubs afterwards, so long as we stayed together and friends who hadn’t turned eighteen yet didn’t come with us. Nick was coming along to protect us, which I of course thought was a fantastic idea for all the wrong reasons. Alyssa and I put so much effort into setting that up, all for nothing.

I will never be Cass here. Even if I was still staying with the Lents, I would always be this stray first and foremost and above everything else. I have this label and there’s no way to take it off. Even if I adapt to the stupid language and the nanites, all the things I spent years learning, all the stories and people which shaped me aren’t here. No-one’s read the novels I’ve read. No-one likes the music I like. No-one on this planet will be able to score people on the Orlando Bloom-meter, the way Alyssa and I used to do with all the cute guys. The only thing which speaks English is this damn diary, which I guess is why I still keep it.

I’m so homesick I could scream.

Sunday, February 3

A wan shadow

No training today. Zan took one look at me this morning and sent me straight for medical exams. I had to work very hard to convince them that the swimming wasn’t the problem, and I look really exhausted and drained just because I couldn’t get to sleep. Leaving out the bit about crying half the night and giving myself the hugest headache in the process. At least this let me know that they mustn’t be monitoring me too closely in my room.

But I ended up spending almost all the day in the medical section, prodded and poked and sitting in machines while they got distracted trying to figure out how my enhancement abilities work. They’ve decided that the number of abilities an individual Setari has might increase the strain on my system when I enhance them. Which is why Zan is training me, since she has only the one. The experiment enhancing three from First Squad at once messed up so badly because between them those three had seventeen talents. Maze has eight all on his own, and apparently there’s a couple of Setari who have even more.

I took the opportunity to have another argument with Ista Tremmar about why my interface had been cut back so much, and why I couldn’t at least have the access I’d had before or straightforward things like being able to see names and so forth, but she just gave me a lecture about qualifying for privileges. It didn’t work to point out that standard access was hardly a privilege, and how stupid it is to run tests which are timed for someone who has been learning their silly language since they were babies. Of course, my inability to speak that silly language with any fluidity made my arguments less than comprehensible.

Ista Tremmar is very strict and by-the-book about a lot of things, but she did say she would review the speed of the tests. But she also told me the simplest thing would be for me to improve my language skills. Bleh.

Monday, February 4

Forward/Backward

Even though I slept quite well last night, swimming practice has been postponed for a few days, which meant Zan delivered me back to my box to sit around again. On the up side, a few more of my interface functions were abruptly restored in the middle of stepping practice. No entertainment, but the minor environmental things like the names over people’s heads. Still, dull day, especially since interface classes are trying to teach me subtraction now. I wish I could pick and choose what the lessons are.

Kanza

That was an infinitely better afternoon than I was expecting. I’d only been back in my box a little while when there was a text popup in my head which is the equivalent of someone outside my room, knocking. Rare consideration, let me tell you, for a visitor to not just open the door.

It was Lohn and Mara, come to kidnap me for lunch. While this was probably their own version of not overlooking the psychological aspects, I had a huge amount of trouble not bubbling over with glee and going completely hyper. Not only did I get to spend some time with the nicest people on this stupid island, but they even planned on taking me outside KOTIS grounds.

The island that the Setari use as a base is called Konna, and is about 20% military facilities and 80% supporting city. The city’s called Konna, too, and was here before KOTIS was established. It was really nice to get out to see atriums and shops, and people not wearing uniforms, and there were plants and advertising and snatches of music and scents of cooking food and everything that the Setari base is not. They even do fake skies, and internal parks and while it can’t entirely escape Huge Shopping Mall Syndrome, it was such a nice change.

We went to an outdoor plaza, with cafés (no coffee or hot chocolate!) arranged around a plant-filled square where kids were running about and someone was busking. Actually busking. Being stuck with the Setari had me convinced that this was such a totally controlled society, though my time with Nenna should have taught me otherwise. I’m guessing there’s little chance that they’ll let me live out here.

The place we went to eat was called "Mimm" and Lohn sat me in the corner of a big booth and then he and Mara sat either side of me with a careful gap so that we didn’t touch. They bracketed me as we travelled through the city too, making sure people didn’t bump me. I thought that pretty funny, since it’s the Setari touching me which is the problem. Most ordinary people wouldn’t have nearly enough talent to hurt me. The food was near enough to fondue as to make no difference (though I’ve no idea what they make the cheese from, and really would prefer not to find out), which seemed hugely out of place on an alien planet, but very yummy! The rest of First Squad showed up just as it was arriving, and I was sorry to see that Maze’s hand was covered in a blue square of bandage tape, and that Zee was walking with a limp.

Maze gave my shirt a quick frown – I’d forgotten about my mascot altogether – and then asked me lots of questions about Earth food and I ended up spending the entire lunch talking. About fondue and then Nordic countries and skiing, a thing they don’t do here at all, and then we swapped different sports that there’s no equivalent to on either world. Taren sports are mostly indoors, unsurprisingly, except for some kind of air races. There’s so many Earth sports that don’t fit well here. Golf and skiing and riding just for starters.

They’d booked a Kanza court for after lunch. Kanza is a very strange game like hockey crossed with mini-golf crossed with Pac-man, except the pucks hover and skim and ricochet madly over the surface of three intersecting recessed circles. The court was in the centre of a grassy amphitheatre where people were eating picnic lunches and watching the games. You play in teams of three and you stand on the edge and hit your pucks all out at once and try and not go in any of the holes until you’ve passed over all the little floating balls of light. If you keep your puck in play you get bonus pucks. It’s tremendously fast-paced and silly and Maze is idiotically good at it so I was glad to be on his and Lohn’s team. Zee sat out because of her leg, and Mara, Alay and Ketzaren were the opposing team and Ketzaren turned out to be really dry and funny and made this hilarious commentary and Lohn really played up to her. I nearly fell into the rink a couple of times from laughing.

After our final round, while Mara’s team was playing, Maze and Lohn went off to get everyone something to drink. I was really tired from all the laughing, and sat with Zee watching the growing audience cheering Mara and Alay playing a duo game when I noticed a couple of people I recognised. The Third Squad captain’s twirly hair makes her pretty hard to miss, even when she’s not in the black uniform. She was standing up the top of the small amphitheatre with another girl, staring down with a really fixed lack of expression. I wasn’t surprised that it was Maze she was watching – half the audience was panting over him or Lohn and most of the rest were drooling over either Mara or Zee. Really, there’s hardly any of the Setari who aren’t above average in looks. It must be a job requirement.

I made sure to not be looking at the Third Squad captain by the time Lohn and Maze got back with the drinks, but I wondered if I’d earned myself an enemy because Maze handed me a drink and sat beside me and smiled and said I had to concede that this was better than a long walk occasionally hitting little balls, which is how I’d described golf. It’s hard not to enjoy it when someone so gorgeous and nice pays me attention. But even though it’s only six or seven years' difference, all the people I know on Earth who are in their mid-twenties are teachers, so I do feel out of place around First Squad. I’m fairly sure Maze doesn’t mean anything, is just being kind and thoughtful. And there’s a sense that underneath it all, he’s unhappy. I keep feeling sorry for him.

When I was delivered back to my box, I was on enough of a high to not let the Fourth Squad captain’s psychological aspects drown out my thanks. I think they all enjoyed themselves too and were genuinely curious about Earth, so it wasn’t like the excursion was a total pity party. And then I napped for what was left of the day and woke up in the middle of the night and really I have the weirdest life right now.

Tuesday, February 5

A very busy day

I had an early appointment with Sa Lents. And I knew about it beforehand! I had a further boost of my interface functions, and found I have an appointment calendar. I can look forward and see what they’ve scheduled for me for the rest of the year. I literally do have appointments an entire Taren year ahead. Almost all medical examinations. I don’t know if the increase in function is down to Zan, or Maze, or even the conversation I had with Ista Tremmar, but it’s a relief to almost be a person again.

The appointments with Sa Lents are always uncomfortable. I ask about Nenna, and he assures me she’s improving. She only wrote to me a couple of times, and then didn’t reply to the last email I sent and I tell myself that she’s probably in a lot of pain and not exactly in a chatty mood. It’s hard to imagine Nenna not being chatty though, and whatever else happens, I’ve changed Nenna forever and I think about that all the time when I’m talking to her father.

I tried to hide it by pressing him comparing dates on Earth to the things that are supposed to have happened on Muina, and he conceded that it sounds like Earth is very atypical. I think Earth is beginning to make him really uncomfortable. It’s one thing for him to document another lost world which fits the known pattern, and something altogether more difficult to try and fit a pre-dispersal settlement into the mix. Especially when I gave him my theory for Muinans originally being Earthlings.

Tarens clearly resemble both Asian and Caucasian people – or what you’d get if Asian and Caucasian people had babies for a few thousand years. Some people with pink skin and round eyes. Some people with skin in golden shades and epicanthic folds on their eyes. And pink-skinned people with epicanthic folds, golden-skinned people with round eyes, or blue eyes, or darker skin, and every combination you can think of. I tried explaining to Sa Lents that he looks Japanese or Korean, but gave up the attempt because my language skills just aren’t up to it, and he was smiling politely and not believing me at all. I’m not sure Tarens even have the concept of race as we do on Earth. Sa Lents acted as if I was explaining that red haired people were a distinct species from blonde haired people.

I don’t know. If the Muinans really come from Earth, why isn’t Earth full of psychic people? Or why doesn’t Earth have stories of cultures ruled by psychics? The Egyptians had their god-kings, true, but they weren’t like those on Stargate. Hm – must watch Tarens carefully in case their eyes flash mysteriously.

After Sa Lents, it was my regular session with Zan. If possible, she was even more formal and correct than ever, and not at all communicative. I thought about trying some personal questions afterwards, while we were eating lunch in the canteen, but there were a fair few Setari there and though I never saw anyone actually looking at us, I felt very centre of attention, so I played obedient student and asked what few questions I could think of about the training she was giving me. I don’t know whether to feel sorry for Zan or not. For all I know she’s done something to deserve people being nasty to her. But I don’t see any reason to give them any ammunition.

Next up was the big test chamber, this time with Zan, all of First Squad, and an in-the-flesh bluesuit, a man named Sur Gidds Selkie. Bluesuits definitely seem to be the military people in charge. Sur is his rank. Squad captains are "See". Lots of ranks and titles start with an S sound but with just the faintest z overtone to it. Now that I can display names (title option on) again, I see I’ve been spelling them wrong. Not an s or z, so much as ts. Tsa, Tsur and Tsee.

Tsur Selkie was a slender, quite short guy who could probably do a great Clint Eastwood imitation if he had any idea who that was. All the wrong colouring and everything, but a totally chipped from flint attitude. And I think he’s the one making most of the decisions about me. First Squad were really correct around him, though not nearly as formal as Zan, who scaled new heights of expressionlessness. He didn’t speak directly to me at all.

This was the first serious testing of the effects of my enhancement since my health break. They started out with Zan, and I had the distinct impression that there was something about Tsur Selkie personally observing which meant they expected to get more information from watching her again. Once Zan had picked blocks up and moved them around for a while, they swapped to Maze doing the same thing. Then they very warily had Zan and Maze touching me at the same time, and using Telekinesis at the same time. I didn’t feel anything, as usual, but Tsur Selkie seemed to find something significant in it all, because he nodded and said:

"The best analogy is an amplifying container. A limited number of talents fit into the container without any particular effect. Too many, and the container is torn. The different sizes of the talents also appears to be relevant. Until further notice, multiple contact is forbidden absolutely. Surion, your squad will move on to testing the effects of enhancement upon each individual talent available to First. A controlled test within the Ena of that category of skills will be arranged. Namara, Twelfth Squad will cover First Squad’s previously scheduled assignments for this rotation. Briefings have been transferred to your mission file."

They all saluted, hand to chest. I just watched. Military equipment doesn’t salute. After he had left, closely followed by Zan, everyone relaxed and Zee surprised me by hugging me and saying: "Now I don’t have to be so anxious about accidentally killing you."

I was glad for once that I was so bad at talking, since my immediate reaction was a sarcastic one about irreplaceable equipment, and First Squad don’t deserve that kind of attitude from me. I was really relieved I’d been assigned to work with them, rather than Twelfth Squad. Zan I think I like, or would if she’d let me, but that Lenton guy isn’t exactly high on my list of desirable people to be around.

It was a long afternoon. No disasters, but between them they had a lot of talents and they examined them all carefully, finding occasional strange distortions, and drawing two tentative conclusions. If they try to use a talent on me when I’m enhancing them it will be distorted in some way, though they can use their talents on me so long as they’re not enhanced by me. And the same if they try to use an Illusion talent while I’m enhancing them. They think that my supposed ability to make illusions somehow interferes with any projections they try while they’re enhanced. I’ve yet to be able to produce anything like an illusion and though Alay tried to talk me through different methods people use, I still didn’t get anywhere.

Although they were cheerful and upbeat, First stayed relatively formal and correct and I took my cue from the way they were using their surnames and was careful to remember that they were on duty and were probably recording everything to put in reports, or being watched by who knows how many people.

But when Zee, who had to go to medical to have her leg checked, was escorting me back to my box I took a chance to ask a few questions.

"Twelfth Squad, what mean do First assignment? Pick which Ionoth kill?"

"We’re assigned particular sections of the Ena to patrol, and clear them of potential threats before they have a chance to find a way into real space. Twelfth Squad will be clearing the sections we would have been working."

Something about the way she said it made me ask: "That not good thing?"

She grimaced. "Twelfth is the newest of the squads, and have little practical experience in the more complex situations you can encounter in the Ena. Our assignment will be an extreme test for them."

Hard to say whether Zan would be pleased about that or not. "Why rest Setari so different First Squad?"

"Different?" Zee asked, but I’d bet she knew what I meant.

"Too serious. Competitive. Less…human."

She thought about it a long time before answering. "The senior Setari started the program later and early on lived with our families, attending KOTIS like it was a school. When we began to show positive results, the program was intensified, the talented living onsite and allowed few visits with their families. The younger Setari started earlier and were pushed harder and further and so are stronger than us. And we will need that strength. But they were given little chance to be children, and like us they’re burdened by the magnitude of the task. Without the Setari program, Tare would be a world of street battles and lurking death." She opened the door to my box, and gave me an unhappy shrug. "The younger Setari, don’t misunderstand them. They are weapons. But they are not so different from you."

I thought about this for a long time after Zee left. Mainly about how much harder and further they’d be willing to push me. But also about growing up knowing you stood between your family and monsters.

Wednesday, February 6

Outfitting

All my morning appointments with Zan have changed to morning appointments with Mara. For me last week revolved entirely around seeing Zan, and now for all I know I’ll never work with her again, and I really can’t see her showing up unexpectedly and taking me to eat fondue. The problem fidgeted around my head half the morning, and eventually I composed a little thank you note, doing my best to make it grammatically correct and everything – though I think that made it worse – and emailed it to her. She treated me as an assignment, but she never called me it. And I really enjoyed looking at her apartment, which is something she didn’t have to show me and something I bet she’s pretty private about.

Mara is far more of a taskmaster with my dodging training. I suppose they’ve decided I’m healthy enough to step it up a little. She started with stretches and steps and all that stuff, but then she brought out a basket of balls and said I had to dodge them and threw them at me, one after another, harder and faster each time. Not at all martial arts-like, but effective at making me want to dodge.

And also very glad to stop, which we did when Lohn showed up to take us to lunch. I get the distinct impression that Lohn and Mara are a couple, for all they don’t hang all over each other. Hell, for all I know they could be married. Even in the same canteen, it’s very different eating lunch with Lohn and Mara – particularly Lohn. He talks non-stop and makes big gestures with his hands, sprawls back taking up two chairs, and chats with every person who passes by. He’s the anti-Zan. All the Setari he talks to unbends to him at least a little. One of the people from Second Squad, a woman named Jeh Omai, joined us. Second Squad is the other senior Setari squad, and Jeh is calm and relaxed and treats Lohn as if he’s an overlarge but endearing great dane puppy.

With me she was straightforwardly curious, and asked me quite a few questions about what it was like to live on Muina. She’s actually the first person to ask me anything about that since Nenna’s friends, so I told her about trying to make a blanket, and that one of the first things I did when I briefly had the wide-ranging interface access was to look up how to make soap (basically oil and ashes, which I don’t see how it can turn into soap, but whatever). Mara said that very few of the Setari had even been to Muina, that it was considered so dangerous that even the squads who were cleared for an investigative mission there weren’t allowed to stay for more than a few hours, and that I was amazingly lucky to have survived. Lohn said First Squad had won itself a good luck charm, and I told him that Devlin actually meant unlucky. I think he thought I was joking.

After lunch, Mara took me off to teach me about clothes. We went down to what I think must be a commissary, and I was given a light, stretchy black harness – a triangle at the back with two straps you slip your arms into and another which went around my ribs and joined like toffee when I held the ends together. Mara had me strip to my underwear in a cubicle and put on the harness and then assume the position – the thinking about doing a star jump pose for spray-on swimsuits. This time I ended up in a Setari uniform.

There’s a mirrored wall in the cubicles, and I spent a long time staring at myself. Barely recognisable as the girl who walked home from her exams and missed her path. My skin had tanned on Muina, since I was outside so much, but that’s faded a lot and other than a few acne scars and tiny freckles it’s looking pretty good. I seem to have developed a jaw line, which wearing a tight throat-hugging collar certainly emphasised, but my figure isn’t nearly up to Setari standards. I look like a gawky crow. My hair has gone blonder than I expected, with only the lower layers brown – again that’s from being out in the sun so much – and it’s grown a couple of inches. I’ve been wearing it in a loose braid most of the time to keep it out of the way. I haven’t suddenly become beautiful or anything – my mouth is still too wide and I’ve always thought my nose a bit too long – but I was looking better than I expected and not really me at all.

I feel like the longer I’m here, the less chance I’ll have of going back, and that putting on this uniform somehow made it nearly impossible. Like I’ve visited Faerie and stupidly eaten the food.

Mara asked if I’d fallen asleep, so I came out, and something about the way she looked at me made me feel I was right about the Faerie food. No-one’s ever asked me to join KOTIS or offered any kind of choice at all. They did rescue me from Muina before I was eaten, though. And they’re fighting against monsters and I can help with that, in possibly the most passive way imaginable, but still apparently I might be useful. Just because I’ve never said yes, or been given the chance to say no, doesn’t mean I haven’t agreed to anything.

Enhancing the Setari is a better option than washing dishes, which is where I’d probably have ended up as just another stray. They’re more interested in finding Earth now, as well, and while I’m not keen on many of the possibilities of being useful to the Setari, I’m trying to focus on the day-to-day and not what the rest of my life is likely to be.

Suits made of nanoliquid are beyond weird to wear. The harness is a specific control mechanism for the nanites which doesn’t rely on the wearer’s personal interface, and lets the Setari do all sorts of fun stuff with their suits. Make them thicker, give themselves kneepads, make the gloves cover the whole hand or go away altogether. Make pockets. You could probably even stick yourself to another Setari. Mara taught me how to manipulate mine and then told me to play for a while. Tomorrow we’re going to go into the Ena to test out how my amplification works there, and to try a couple of talents which don’t work in actual space. We’re not going to be fighting Ionoth or anything, but it’s still all a bit daunting.

Thursday, February 7

Glimpse

The excursion into the Ena was scheduled for the morning, so no dodging practice. Mara collected me, made sure I brought my uniform harness, and took me to the nearest "nano-changing room". I think the Setari must have these in their own apartments, rather than having to leave their clothes in little lockers about the place.

I didn’t like walking through the facility in uniform, and almost wished they’d given me my own colour or something, for all that it would make me stand out more. But I’m willing to bet that the black nanosuit is something that these people earn, not just parade about in. I was glad I’d made the effort to do my hair really neatly in a French braid, but I still felt vaguely like I was going to be arrested for the equivalent of impersonating a police officer. And for a moment there it felt like Maze and Lohn and Zee didn’t even recognise me. Lohn at least murmured "All grown up," before getting serious and professional. Going into the Ena is the most formal I’ve ever seen First Squad when a bluesuit isn’t around. Because, even though we were going to the safest bit they could find, the Ena is dangerous.

The blast doors emphasised that point. KOTIS was built on this island because it’s a very torn space and there are lots of places where it’s easy to get from actual space to the Ena, and vice versa. Wherever they find one of these torn spots on Tare, they build a metal box around it, with doors that only the nastiest of monsters could hope to claw their way through.

While we were waiting for clearance, Maze set up a group channel or space in the interface for the squad, started a mission log which would record everything we did, and then talked me through what was going to happen.

"We have three objectives today. To test your enhancement on the talents which are only effective in the Ena. To see if there’s any variation with the talents we’ve already tested due to the different environment. And to orient you in the Ena, since you stepped directly from your world to Muina, and you were sedated when you were transported from Muina to Tare. The Ena is a very disorienting place, visually overwhelming in places, and at the same time it intensifies the senses. Tell us immediately if you start experiencing any kind of sickness or distress.

"Annan and Gainer will accompany you at all times while we are in the Ena. Don’t move anywhere without them. If we encounter any situation which requires moving quickly, they will move you. Do not run. Above all, do not enter any of the gates without clearance. Do you understand all that?"

"Yes," I said, in such a small voice I sounded about five.

Maze crinkled the corner of his eyes encouragingly at me before going on. "We are unlikely to encounter Ionoth in this section, but it always remains a possibility. Depending on the type, we may choose to deal with it. You’ll be kept well out of the way if that’s the case. Anything serious, and we’ll return you to actual space before approaching it."

By this time the big door had opened, and we moved into the spacious metal box. I couldn’t see any sign of visible tears in the world, but then I hadn’t when I walked from Earth to Muina either. The interface obligingly drew a triangle of light in the air in front of us, showing where we should walk. Maze and Mara went first and then me with Zee and Alay on either side of me. I was finding all the surnames confusing, so it’s good that I’d been given back name display and could see Zee Annan and Alay Gainer floating over their heads.

I didn’t feel any sense of resistance walking through the triangle, but I certainly felt the cold. That was something they hadn’t mentioned, that the Ena is perhaps 10 or 15 degrees Celsius. And the weird thing was, we were still in the metal containment box, and the door was closed, but most of the walls were missing – or, not missing. If you’ve ever seen a drawing someone’s made, where they start with the line art and then colour it in, we were in a version of the box where the line art was there, but only half of it was coloured in. Kind of.

Anyway, it meant we could walk out of the box through one of the uncoloured sections of wall. I felt like I was walking into a half-complete animation for Setari: the CGI Movie. We were where we’d been before, but with all the people and lots of the textures missing. This was the part of the Ena they call near-space, and it was truly weird.

It did make me feel more alive. I don’t know if it was the cold, or a sense that the gravity was lighter there, or just…mystic spooky stuff, but I felt hyper-alert and awake. Maybe the air there has adrenaline in it. Everyone was waiting to see how I reacted, so I smiled and shrugged and Maze nodded and started off.

It took me a while to recognise the gates for what they were, scattered through the construction zone of a world. Some glinted and some were dark. It was only when we rounded the corner into a patch where there was nothing above us but a dark sketch of a sky and…thousands of them. It was like someone had taken an ocean’s worth of mirror and shattered it and flung the pieces to spin in every direction, but every piece reflected not what was before it but some other place. Other space.

We didn’t walk far, stopping at a jagged rift about the size of a car: all brilliant green intensity. Through it was grass, and rolling hills, and a pale blue sky paling to white. Huge tumbled stones, like blocks for an ancient grey castle. Most of this was intact, coloured in, but the edges of the space were fading out into mist.

"Try not to touch any edges stepping through. Gates can be fragile, and tearing them attracts Iono–"

Maze stepped through as he spoke, lifting his feet carefully, and I noticed that passing through not only cut off the sound, but that no connection had appeared in the group channel display where Maze should be. When I stepped through myself there was a soap-bubble sensation, and the air changed again, bringing an over-emphasised sense of grassiness. There were a lot fewer of the pieces of broken mirror here, which might be why they chose it.

"Spaces what exactly?" I asked, realising how limited the horizon was. This wasn’t what I’d pictured at all.

"One day perhaps we’ll have a definitive answer on that," Zee said, while Maze and Mara had a scan-the-area-for-enemies moment. "For now, my favourite definition of it is that they’re the sloughed-off memories of living worlds, crystallised and decaying fragments of the past tumbling and interconnecting."

I suppose if someone had taken a billion jigsaws and mixed all the pieces together and then had them connect up randomly so you could move from piece to piece you’d get the same effect, but Zee’s explanation was much more poetic.

"Ionoth memories inhabitants of worlds?" I asked, and saw I’d managed to surprise them.

"That’s one of the possibilities," Lohn said. "Maybe part of Muina’s histories survived on your world after all."

"We lots entertaining fantasy," I said. No-one seems to believe me when I say Earth wasn’t settled by Muinans.

"Looks clear," Maze said, coming back to us. "Let’s get started."

The testing was much the same as all the testing we’ve been doing, with me contributing a lot of standing about. I wish I could at least figure out how to make these illusions. Still, it was entertaining watching Maze throw the stone blocks at one another, creating fantastic explosions of rock and dust. Most of the skills First Squad hadn’t already tried seemed to work, and they were pleased about one which involved the gates, but I was more than glad when they decided it was time to head back.

And then, as we were walking back to the gate we’d entered by, there was a small gate, twice the size of my head. And through it, something so familiar my heart almost stopped. I certainly stopped, and my internal recording shows me how quickly Zee and Alay reacted, shifting around in my peripheral vision, flanking me. At the time, all I could see was It.

"That’s what your world looks like?" Maze asked, eventually.

I shrugged, feeling so betrayed I wanted to scream. "Some parts. Australia lots red dirt. Sky – that quality light – I forgotten how big sky is. That right sort tree." Then I scrubbed at my face and added in English: "Crying over a fricking gum tree. How pathetic can I get?"

I made myself stop. Made myself say something that would get them moving. Made myself hold it in, at least until we were back on Tare and I could say I was tired and wanted a shower. None of First Squad were under any illusion about how I was feeling, but they had sense enough to know they couldn’t fix it, and were kind enough to leave me with a short stop at medical and then to my room.

I thought it was real. Just for that second, before I saw the fraying edges, I thought that was Earth. I can still feel the way my stomach twisted, the way every part of me leapt through stillness into roaring joy, and then crashed.

All the feelings I’ve been trying to hold back, all my struggles to resign myself to being this stray, this person out of place and never really belonging, they’ve risen up to drown me. And tomorrow’s my birthday. For a brief second I thought I had a chance, that I could go home and be there for my birthday and I just don’t know if I can stand this awful pit that’s opened up in me after that moment of belief.

I want to go home.

Monday, February 11

Happy Birthday

I was sitting on my bed when I woke up. MY bed. My bed, my room, my world.

Just, not quite.

Somehow I’d ended up in Earth’s near-space. The cold tipped me off immediately, even before I saw the great big sections of wall lacking any substance. I was horribly chilled, cold with a deep ache in my bones, like I’d been sitting outside in Winter. Sydney’s Winters aren’t exactly sub-zero, but you don’t feel happy about life if you sit out in them wearing a pair of underpants and a thigh-length t-shirt.

But, oh gods, cold was the last thing I cared about right then. I had no idea how I’d managed it, but somehow I’d ended up THIS far away from exactly where I wanted to be. I jumped up, and staggered a bit since I was very stiff, like I’d been there a while, then pulled open the door. Touching and moving things in near-space was like being underwater. I could lift objects, but things which should be light needed more push, and things I expected to be heavy were buoyed up unexpectedly.

At first I was just looking. All those trivial domestic things which were familiar and right and how things should be done, instead of the way they’re done on Tare. Which were MINE. I started recording it, a thing which is becoming more automatic with me. Storing memories to re-examine later.

A lot was missing. The walls and furniture, the bigger and more permanent objects, were solid enough, but most smaller objects were a haze where I could almost make out the outline of what should be there, but it was more a smudge than any kind of substance. The bookshelves were full of the impression of books, blocky and colourful, but there were only one or two shelves – the shelves where Mum keeps her favourites – where I could make out titles or pick anything up.

The back garden was unexpectedly real. Mum likes having a garden, but she doesn’t spend a lot of time on it, and goes for a cottage garden look: masses of plants and no neat borders or parts which need to be constantly weeded. The plants, the leaves, flowers, were all there. It even had some of the scent, though everything was flattened by a tinny greyness. No blue sky, but a washed out watercolour slate.

I’d gone outside to look for gates. I’d been able to see the gate we’d used in Tare’s near-space, so I figured my best bet was to look through all the nearby gates until I found one which led to planet instead of Ena and then see whether I was able to get through it.

No gates. None visible, anyway. I went out to the street and walked down it, looking for any sign, the bitumen very gritty beneath my bare feet but oddly warmer than most everything else. I knew that Muina and Tare were in an area that is considered shattered, which is why they have so much trouble with Ionoth, but it seemed Earth’s near-space was signally lacking ways in and out of it.

I don’t know why I wasn’t more scared. I think the cold had blunted my common sense. I knew on a mental level that, rather than being right where I wanted, I was in serious shit. If ever a world memory would have monsters, it would be Earth’s. Monsters wearing the faces of people, monsters which did the most awful things to each other, and that didn’t even count current and past non-human predators, let alone the creatures we liked to make up. For all that Australia’s one of the safest places you could possibly live, plenty of bad things have happened there. And I was also cold and hungry and could die of that as readily as being eaten.

But I was numb to thoughts of danger, and just returned to the outline of my home and sat down on the back patio steps. I couldn’t work out how I’d gotten there, but was sure it wasn’t a dream. The most I could think of doing was to try and find something tangible enough to keep me warm, and then to wander around randomly hoping I could find a gate.

The spaces seem to be quiet places, and the only noise I’d heard had been something like wind or static, distant but ever-present. I don’t think I heard anything else at all, but I felt a sudden tingle all through me and a sense of something passing. I jerked upright, realising I’d nearly fallen asleep, and stared over my shoulder at the familiar boards of the patio and the sliding door into the kitchen.

Shadows. The patio table and chairs, sketchily half there, and shadows. Just the faintest hint of shapes, of people, which seemed to get fainter or darker as I moved my head. It didn’t occur to me for a moment that they might be Ionoth. Filled with hope, I stood and began casting about, walking back and forth until I found the best spot to see them, standing right in the frame of the sliding door, facing outwards. I knew Dad straight away – he’s tall and he tends to stoop. Mum was sitting down. The short shadow had to be Jules. Just there, right in front of me.

I knew shouting was pointless – I’d already seen that sound didn’t carry across. Reaching out with my fingers and trying to tear a hole did nothing. It was all just air, with no edges I could catch. But with just an odd thickness which reminded me of the gates First Squad had taken me through. I concentrated on that, on the idea of resistance, of there being something between my world and me, something that if I could only touch, I could push against. I didn’t reach out again, but leaned, feeling that thickness against my cheek, watching and willing those shadows to take on form, to let me see them properly.

It became amazingly difficult really quick, like pushing against a rubber wall that resisted after only a little stretching, but with each millimetre came more details. The aunts were there, and Nick. It was overcast, but not raining. Everyone had come over for lunch on my birthday, even my Dad and Nick. Nick had bruises all down one side of his face. Mum had Mimmit, our calico cat, on her lap, and she looked so worn and tired and unlike herself and I knew that was all because of me and pushed harder and harder.

Mimmit suddenly arched and spat and scrambled off Mum’s lap. And then Aunt Bet dropped her glass and Mum stared after Mimmit, then in the direction Mimmit had been hissing, and then she looked like she’d been stabbed.

Thank all the gods for sign language. I’ve never been particularly good at it, but what I can’t remember I can spell. And I had no problems managing: "Not dead."

Jules reacted first, leaning forward and trying to touch my arm. He said something, while Mum squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. Dad tried to grab my shoulder, but other than a little tingling I couldn’t feel him at all. I tried pushing against the wall, but I didn’t seem to be able to go any further, and was feeling really exhausted just staying as far as I’d managed. But at least I could finally tell them what happened.

"Walk through wormhole," I signed. "Other planet."

That made Mum look totally incredulous and everyone started talking and trying to sign back at once. Aunt Sue grabbed her bag and pulled out her mobile phone, pointing it at me. I looked at Nick and signed: "What happen face?"

"Dad," he signed, which was enough of an explanation. When Nick’s Dad gets really drunk, he stops recognising people, and thinks he’s being attacked. Nick can usually manage him, but it’s not his first black eye. Yet he won’t leave.

Nick gave me that grin which has always been one of my favourite things in the world, where bad stuff has been happening, but he’s decided to sit back and make the most of the good. "WTF?" he added, pointing at me.

Explaining all of what had happened to me seemed so enormous. I tried.

"Walk home. Next, other planet forest. Walk days. Ruins. Empty. Then rescue psychic space ninjas." I shrugged at their expressions as I spelled, but it was the best explanation I had for the Setari. "Many world, monsters. Astral plane? They fight monsters. Found me, took me their planet. Tare. People me, strays. Gates – wormholes – everywhere. Monsters, people, walk through. Earth hardly any gates." I pushed at the air in front of me helplessly. "Looking for gate."

Mum’s expression had slowly changed while she watched me sign. She’d decided she wasn’t hallucinating, and being her took the story at face value.

"Monsters there with you?" she signed back.

"Not know. Not know how here."

"Why lab rat?"

I was beginning to regret my mascot: I wouldn’t have told Mum that. All I could do was shrug. "Too many medical exams. But nanotech computer in head! Download language. Do school in bed."

Mum’s expression – everyone’s – changed in a way which made me look quickly over my shoulder, and saved me from being scared out of my skin by the Fourth Squad captain. He’s even better than Zan at being all business, never surprised or impressed by anything. After glancing past me at my world and my family he just removed some black straps from his arm and held them out to me. My uniform harness.

I only just managed to say "Thank you," because I was being very surprised that the Setari had found me when I couldn’t even guess how I’d gotten here.

"Space ninja?" Mum signed, as I slipped on the harness. I nodded and she looked him up and down a moment, then added: "Friend or enemy?"

Hopefully I didn’t look too doubtful when I looked back. But luckily the Fourth Squad captain was drawing off a pad of solidified nanoliquid which had been attached to his suit, and not looking at my expression.

"There are no tears that I can see in this world’s wall," he said. "If you succeed in breaking through here, Ionoth will flood to this point."

I flinched, because I hadn’t thought about that at all. "Say I put you danger," I signed, and watched as Mum frowned and Dad looked suspicious. Then the Fourth Squad captain pressed the pad of nanoliquid to the centre of the harness where it crossed my back and the suit flowed over me, bringing immediate warmth. I hadn’t realised how cold I’d been.

"Venom!" Jules signed, his face lit up. He loves the Spiderman movies.

I smiled at him, but then said: "Can find gate?"

"There are none in this area, possibly no tears at all into your world. There may be natural gates, but they are immensely rare."

This wasn’t exactly no, but I doubted I could force him to do anything, even if he could find a natural gate. "What realistic chances Tare find way get me home?"

He was looking behind us now, that attentive survey familiar from my day with First Squad: searching for Ionoth. "Before today’s excursion, I would have said none. Especially having seen how far from the centre of the fractures this is. But if you can reproduce whatever you did to track your world, quite obviously reaching this planet’s near-space is possible."

The near-space, yes. But even if I could travel here at will, I couldn’t get further, and there was absolutely no way I was going to be the first person to tear a hole in Earth’s protection against monsters.

They must have seen it in my face, when I turned back. Dad said something, looking upset, and Mum’s hands closed on the arms of her chair.

"Have to go back. Don’t know ever find gate not hurt Earth. Chance low." It was getting really hard not to cry. "Miss you so much."

"Can I come?" Jules signed enthusiastically, and then gaped as the Fourth Squad captain turned – quite casually – and skewered some thing leaping at us from the outline of the lounge room door. It looked like a spider made of rusty nails and old tyre rubber, which really isn’t what I expected Ionoth to look like, and as he held it up so he could get a better look at it I saw that he’d made a blade of nanoliquid grow out of the arm of his suit. I’d seen something like that in the movies I’d watched with Nenna, and it’s not that different from Terminator 2, so I wasn’t particularly surprised. The Ionoth spider was shock enough.

My Dad’s face had changed when I looked back. He’d wanted to argue, but now he wanted me to get to safety as soon as I could, no matter where safety was. "Happy Birthday," he signed slowly. "Hugs."

"Love you," I signed back, then looked over at Nick and made an X with my arms to give him a hug too.

He copied me, and added: "Be happy."

"You too," I signed back carefully. "Tell Alyssa, sorry miss party. Miss her."

Nick grinned. "Will do."

I smiled at my aunts, then looked at my Mum.

"Live well," she signed.

It was exactly the sort of thing Mum would say. I nodded, thought for a moment then signed: "Thank you for being my Mum. Love you always."

That made us both cry and I tried to smile and then stepped back, wiping at my face as my family faded to shadows. I wanted to stay, to say more, to ask questions about a thousand things, but I wasn’t silly or selfish enough. If one Ionoth had come to attack us, more would.

I turned to the Fourth Squad captain, who had gotten rid of the spider and who I really doubted wanted to stand around while I played happy families, but was at least managing not to look impatient. "Sorry," I said. "Ready now."

He just handed me a small flask and a wrapped food bar, and said: "Follow close."

It was almost ten minutes' walk to the gate, and I wondered how I’d managed to travel it while asleep, and how he had followed me. We met another of the spider things as we twisted a long path through the outlines of my neighbourhood, but it gave him as little trouble as the first one. Eating and drinking had succeeded in making me feel hungry and exhausted, but I did find a small amount of pleasure in being able to make myself a pocket to put the flask and empty wrapper in.

The gate was in someone’s back yard, in what would be a swimming pool if the water had remembered to be there. I could see red earth through it, blue sky, a scatter of huge rocks. It wasn’t a clean tear: the edges were surrounded by tiny fragments, thousands of glinting glimpses of red and blue. And at the bottom of the pool were a half-dozen of the spiders and a fraying shadow with claws. Dead. It was hard to follow down to stand among the bodies.

"Gates, particularly the ones you tore wider, are the most dangerous points in the spaces, because the threat on the far side cannot be clearly gauged. If this side is clear, I will go through and you will wait without moving until I signal you to come through. Do not come through without my signal unless you are in immediate danger of attack on this side. Should we need to run, above all things stay close to me, no matter where I run. Do you understand?"

"I tore gate?" I asked, staring down at all the monsters he’d had to kill, just at this one spot.

"You don’t remember?" He looked at me, perhaps gauging whether I was lying. His eyes never seemed to show surprise; never annoyed or angry or really interested. "You tore a new rift in Tare’s wall, and either struck or widened thirteen gates between here and there."

I stared. "Hole in medical facility?" I could feel my face heat, but rather than go into it further just said: "I wake here."

He’d gone back to scanning the area, then studied the gate for a very fixed and intent moment before stepping through it. Even though I’d been wandering about Earth’s near-space by myself, the instant the Fourth Squad captain was on the far side of the gate I felt horribly vulnerable. A half-dozen examples of why I was vulnerable were scattered around my feet, and the edge of the pool was at eye-level so I could have a nice close look at anything scuttling up. That really destroyed any sense of pleasure I could gain from my last few moments in Earth’s near-space.

Fortunately he signalled almost immediately, and I stepped out onto a red, flat plain where the sky was the biggest thing ever and there was plenty of distance between me and anything. The space was the memory of heat, and a ribbon in the sky that seemed to twist and shift, but was way too far away to be scary.

In all that space, I could only see two other gates. One was very distant, a glimmering on the horizon, and the other up a slope of rock that was no harder to climb than a flight of stairs.

"The next space is very populated," the Fourth Squad captain said as we approached the top of the rock slope. "They are tola type, not dangerous unless you remain among them, but both gates are thick with them and if enough gather it could be difficult to pass them. They are attracted to sound, so walk quietly and only communicate through the interface. Don’t stop at the following gate; we’re going to walk straight through."

Tola meant thin. I stared through the gate at what looked to me like vertically striped shadows and couldn’t see anything at all that looked like monsters. I remembered in time not to walk through the first gate until he signalled, but he did so almost immediately anyway. It felt like I stumbled into cold cobweb. The space was, I think, a shadow of a forest, so faded that there wasn’t really even trees there, just darker stripes. The Fourth Squad captain moved forward, holding one arm before his face and I followed as best I could, though it was a little like when I’d been trying to push my way out of Earth’s near-space, just that the resistance didn’t get any harder. And it was damn dark. The gate we were heading for wasn’t even visible to me, and I immediately lost sight of him. The only reason I didn’t freak out completely was because my interface knew where he was and I realised if I turned on names I could follow him far more easily. So I followed a floating Kaoren Ruuel[1] sign through the forest of creepiness, and almost felt like laughing.

The next space was totally black, so I was lucky it had already occurred to me to track him using the interface. Zan had said the Fourth Squad captain’s talents were Sight-based, which explained how he was able to walk so confidently into pitch dark. I think the space was some sort of cave or tunnel. The ground was fortunately smooth, though, and it was short. The next gate was only ten or fifteen metres away, and I saw silvery grey water and stopped while he passed through.

But again he signalled straight away and I walked out onto a beach at night. That was a strange one – beautiful and eerie, all silver and black, but no moon in the sky to explain where the light was coming from. There was a single line of footprints along the beach, with sand kicked up behind them to show how fast he’d been going. The Fourth Squad captain’s, and yet none for me.

"Why not full squad?" I asked, since asking him if I’d been levitating would have been pointless.

"Groups attract Ionoth. Fighting our way through would have been too great a delay."

So he’d come alone through thirteen spaces to find me. I’d seen enough of how First Squad behaved going to a space they’d considered safe to know how dangerous that had to be.

"Thank you," I said. "Save my life."

This he didn’t even respond to, which made me feel just wonderful. But of course he hadn’t come to save Cass, but to retrieve a potentially valuable weapon. He was taking me back to the place where I was the amplifying stray and something they were willing to risk a squad captain’s life to retrieve. I hadn’t realised how valuable I was to them.

The next gate opened out onto a city of skyscrapers covered in vines. I could tell by the way the Fourth Squad captain turned his head once he was through that there were Ionoth in there, and I wasn’t surprised when he went off to one side and didn’t immediately come back. It would be my fault if he was killed.

The question of what would happen if I kept doing this occupied me for the incredibly long time it took my only protection to return, and I was just switching over to what I would do if he didn’t come back when he reappeared. He didn’t look injured though, or even out of breath when he signalled me to come through, but he said: "Move quickly through here," and strode off at double pace.

That place smelled of death. I don’t know how else to describe it. Old blood and rotting plants and the stink of decay and wrongness. Death. I couldn’t see what it was which had kept the Fourth Squad captain so long, but I didn’t particularly want to, and scurried after him. Whatever world that space belonged to must be a truly horrible place.

There were at least a dozen visible gates there – every space we went into seemed to have more. Every time we came close to a gate, my heart lifted, then fell when we moved past. My need to get out of the smell of it was incredible. And when the Fourth Squad captain finally did stop, at a gate showing only some carved grey stone and a bit of stair, he turned and looked carefully around us and I realised I was going to have stay there alone while he cleared the next space. I had to bite my lip not to say pointless things, and when he stepped into the next world, looked around, then moved away, I nearly ignored what he’d said and went after him.

I think it was the idea of the Fourth Squad captain giving me a lecture on doing what I was told which kept me there. But I felt really sick about it, and stared in every direction, convinced that things were moving toward me. The gate was in the middle of a street, and the leaves overhanging the windows above fluttered and shifted all the time. And I could hear a noise, a scratching, coming closer. I was trying to decide what constituted immediate danger of attack when the Fourth Squad captain reappeared and came back through to my side of the gate.

"We’re going to run," he said. "Straight up the stair to the apex and straight through the gate. Go."

Devil and Deep Blue Sea time. I was so freaked out by the smell and sounds of the skyscraper place that I didn’t hesitate. The next space was cold and full of a stifled echo, a distant roar. I looked down, and the angle of the stairs was way too sharp to make that a good idea, though what was at the bottom of it certainly helped in getting me moving in the other direction. The grey stone was a stepped pyramid, huge, rising out of an ocean of black…something. It reminded me horribly of the nanoliquid our suits were made of, writhing tendrils of it reaching upward. And all over the sides of the pyramid were shadows of people on spikes, speared through their backs like butterflies, and with tendrils of black reaching toward us from out of their chests.

I am not good at running up flights of stairs. Especially not crumbling stone steps with chunks of recently severed black stuff on them. I can replay the eternal frantic minute it took us to get out of that space, can see the Fourth Squad captain overtake me and cut clear a path, but I don’t actually remember too much of it, just this white panic. If the gates didn’t have that soap-bubble resistance, I think I would have kept on running, though my chest felt like it was going to explode. As it was, it was enough to break my momentum, and I went down on my hands and knees, gasping.

The Fourth Squad captain walked a little way ahead while I recovered, looking annoyingly unaffected by sprinting up nearly-vertical stairs. Breathing a little deeper. I stared back over my shoulder and shuddered and said: "Cthulhu lives." And could probably chase us through the gate, since Ionoth theoretically could move from space to space. The idea was enough to get me to my feet and looking around.

We were on a branch, wide and soft with moss and lichen, and so far up that if there was any ground in this space it was lost in the gloom below. I became very glad I hadn’t kept running. The Fourth Squad captain had walked down to where another branch crossed over the top of the first, and was making handholds in it using another blade made out of nanoliquid. When he climbed up, I followed, though I was starting to feel very rubbery-legged and ill. I’d managed to count through the worlds we had crossed – red desert, tola forest, tunnel, beach, skyscrapers, pyramid, tree – which made six more until we reached Tare’s near-space. In retrospect I’m glad the Fourth Squad captain didn’t show any sign of caring about my opinions, because I really wanted to stop and hug my knees and rock back and forth for a while, and it was only that he seemed to expect me not to that kept me walking.

Thankfully the next gate was one he immediately gestured me through, and I grew a little more hopeful about getting back without being eaten. That space was a huge one, impossibly tall, with all these white platforms crisscrossing a black chasm and climbing up into stars. There were tons of gates, the most I’d seen in any of the spaces, but I was glad that the Fourth Squad captain seemed to be heading for one on the same level as us, since I wasn’t keen on more climbing.

Head jerking upward, he stopped so abruptly that I almost ran into his back. Given it was the first time I’d seen him act at all surprised by anything, I stared too, of course, but all I saw were some distant washes of colour, something like what I’d expect the Aurora Borealis to look like. And there was a faint, vaguely familiar noise which I thought might be whale song. The Fourth Squad captain found it far more interesting than anything else we’d encountered, and was standing stock-still, staring.

Then he said, "Augment me," and held a hand back.

He’d been very careful all along not to touch me, and alone in the middle of the spaces was not a good place to test my effect on whatever talent set he had. At the same time, I doubted he ever gave an order without a reason, so I took his hand without stupidly saying: "Are you sure?" But with great misgivings.

And he fell to his knees. Totally not what you want your sole rescuer to be doing, especially since he was standing near the front edge of one of the platforms at the time, and yanked my arm half out of its socket in the process. And just stayed there, staring upwards.

With his eyes opened wide, he didn’t look like he was in pain, more like he was having some sort of religious experience. I thought it was damn stupid timing, but I’d been wanting some knee-hugging time, so I sat on the platform’s edge and waited. And waited.

Eventually I lay back and watched the distant light show, and tried to get the suit’s fingers on my free hand to turn into knives, which wasn’t very successful. I could make them go out to spiky points, but they were soft, rubbery spiky points, just like the rest of the suit. Mara hadn’t shown me how to make weapons.

The noises grew a little louder, and I realised that they were the noises I’d heard on Muina, except not nearly so close. The massive that they’d come racing to investigate, and found me instead. And these Ddura were supposed to be some tool or weapon to use in fixing the problem tearing all the spaces apart, so I guess I understood why the Fourth Squad captain was so interested in that one, but if he had stayed like that much longer I would have given in to creeping weariness and passed out, and wouldn’t even have been able to shout a warning if something came along to eat us. Fortunately the Ddura faded away, and the Fourth Squad captain closed his eyes and took a long shuddering breath. I wasn’t sure he’d even blinked for all of the time he’d looked at it.

"Beginning think your brain melt," I said, and he looked down at me so blankly I knew he’d completely forgotten I was there.

"Not yet," was all he said, and climbed a little stiffly to his feet, keeping hold of my hand so I couldn’t stay lying down. "We’re going up."

I can’t tell you how unenthusiastic that made me. The Ddura had been a long long way away. I’m not sure what the Fourth Squad captain would have done if I’d kicked up a fuss – carried me up, maybe. He hadn’t let go of my hand, and started walking without waiting to see what my response was, so I trailed along behind him wondering when the day would end.

But we only went up about three staircases worth of platforms, and stopped before a tall but narrow rift to a white place splashed with washes of colour, with a tall white tower in the middle, big and solid with very familiar arch-shaped doors. The Fourth Squad captain indulged in another staring session, but didn’t try to go through the gate, just stood studying everything he could see.

Since the building had some similarities to those on Muina I immediately guessed it was either a space belonging to Muina or one of these extremely dangerous supports that the Muinans had built in the Ena which had caused everything to fracture. The Fourth Squad captain was being intense enough about it to make me think it was something that important, and since the supports were supposed to be incredibly dangerous I’m glad he didn’t decide to go any closer.

After he was done looking he held out his free hand, which glowed faintly, and made the gate glow faintly in return. And made him go interestingly pale and squish my hand a bit.

There were five gates between the platform space and Tare’s near-space. He did the same thing at every single one of them after we’d passed through, and if there’d been the slightest need for running or killing Ionoth we would have been screwed because whatever making the gates glow was about, it took as much out of him as running up those stairs had me. By the time we’d reached a familiar-looking metal box, I was beginning to wonder if I’d have to carry him, which wasn’t going to happen since he’s six foot two at least. As soon as we stepped through the last gate into the proper world he let go of me, leaned his back against a wall, and closed his eyes, looking so grey I thought he was going to faint.

The shielding door opened almost immediately, after the briefest time for scans. I was swooped on by greensuits and greysuits, while Fourth Squad and a couple of other Setari rushed my rescuer. One of them, obviously a friend since he called him by his first name, said, "Ends, Kaoren, how far did you have to go? I’ve never seen you like this."

"Never mind that." The Fourth Squad captain was recovering, and had straightened up. "Get Third mobilised. I stumbled across one of the Pillars out there, and even with the stray’s enhancement I don’t have the strength to truly lock every gate for five spaces."

He could have announced the sky was falling, the way everyone jumped and stared. Me, I was glad I was so tired, because I knew I was headed straight for endless medical tests and I planned to sleep through them. Which I did, except for blearily answering a few questions about no I really don’t know how I almost got to Earth. The room I’m in now is even more of a box than before, with scanners constantly pointed at me because they’re trying to work out what I did and whether they can stop me from doing it again. They gave me my diary after a day, and it’s taken me forever to write this all down, but that’s okay because my interface has been shut off almost completely while they run tests and there’s nothing else to do.

Lab Rat again. Stray, always. It really hurt to hear that.

But I guess I’ll cope. It makes so much difference that Mum and Dad know I’m not dead. That I got to say goodbye. I don’t know if I will ever be treated as a person here, but I can follow Nick’s lead and look on the bright side of things until I can make them better. I’m not starving. Nothing has eaten me. And somehow, in a way I don’t understand, I have the ability to go to Earth. I don’t want to kill myself doing it, and I won’t ever risk drawing Ionoth there, but now I have a goal beyond being a useful stray. If I can gain control, perhaps I can figure out a way to find a natural gate, and be able to go back to my real life, to being Cass again.

As birthdays go, it could have been worse.

Tuesday, February 12

Psych 101

Maze came to see me after lunch, to talk me through what they’d concluded from all the tests. He didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t figured out already: that I must have some ability to find Earth through the spaces, and then travel there, bashing open gates on the way. While asleep. It’s nothing like any ability they’ve encountered before, and since they work out your abilities by looking for known patterns in the brain, they’ve now decided they really don’t have any idea what I can do and they don’t know how to test me. They think they’ve probably got it wrong about the Illusion casting, too.

Mainly they’re worried I’ll keep tearing holes where they don’t want them, and vanishing.

Maze asked if there was anything he could do for me, which isn’t the sort of thing you ask someone who’s been locked in a room for days on end with nothing to do except wait for the next medical exam. There’s obviously tons of things they could do, but the question is what they were doing. Poor Maze must have wondered why I looked so angry, but because it was Maze I managed to not shriek and rant.

"Thing I need is be less homesick," I said. "Is why that happen, guess. Didn’t go bed think leave tonight. Not scared, upset. Just homesick. But is different now, plus. Family know where am, make big difference. Plus, would choose not go unless find way not tear hole Earth’s shield, bring monsters. Not acceptable. Is found way stop me leaving?"

"In truth, we don’t know. You’re still here, but that may be because you haven’t tried to leave. We don’t know if the extra containment on this room is having any effect on you, but it does help some of the more sensitive Setari, who need dampening on their quarters to sleep properly."

"Bigger box soon?" I asked, hopefully.

"Keeping you in high security intensive care indefinitely isn’t very practical." Maze gave me what I think of as his captain look. "And stop calling it a box."

"Is box long as door lock. What think I do? Go day trip Unara?" My voice had gone flat and hard, and I sighed and shook my head. "Getting tired silly psychology games. Put Cass in box nothing to do. Cass happy do anything, try hard training. Take Cass outside lunch, happy Cass try harder. Cass leave to Earth. Put Cass in smaller box, take away toys."

"You think that’s why we took you to lunch?"

"No." I was embarrassed about being nasty. "First Squad just nice people. But bet Maze report state Stray’s mental health."

His mouth squinched a little, so I knew I was right.

"First Squad, Setari, they useful weapons. Lots rules. Choose be Setari because protect home. I here, not my planet, but owe life. Since can’t go home yet, willing help. Right thing do. Accept rules. But. Kept in box, annoying. Have interface cut back, stupid. If testing, need reproduce circumstance. Different circumstance nullify test. Someone petty? Or punishment? All achieve is grumpy Cass. Then Maze sent talk me."

"Do we seem that manipulative?" He looked really sad.

I shrugged. "Don’t know sure. Could just be big stupid machine forget Cass person. Or is idea make very obedient? Don’t know. Tolerate it, just annoyed." And I didn’t want to push them to worse treatment, the possibilities of which I’d had more than enough time to dwell on. I’d had this horrible nightmare where I’d dreamt there was a scar on my stomach, and found out they’d harvested my ovaries and were trying to breed more amplifiers. And since that really was a logical approach, I’d been freaked out half the day about it, caught between desperately attempting to leave again and telling myself not to over-react. Which was probably why I said any of this stuff to Maze. "Sorry. Not Maze’s fault. What happen big tower?"

I think I’d really depressed him, but he brightened up at the change of subject.

"That was truly spectacular luck. The Ionoth are symptoms, while the Pillars are the disease. Ever since we’ve been able to travel among the spaces we’ve been searching for them, and that’s intensified a great deal over the past five years with specialist Setari squads. Only twice before have we managed to get anywhere near one, and both times the shifting of the gates meant we barely viewed them before they were cut off. To capture information on a Ddura and a Pillar both is the most progress we’ve ever made. We’re about to lose the path to this one, despite everything we can do to lock the gates, but have been able to deploy a number of drones in the space, and they went ahead yesterday afternoon and sent Third in to make a preliminary approach, which went without a hitch. Best of all, they think the gate we’re losing is a rotational, and the rest relatively stable, so we should be able to return regularly and unpick its mysteries."

"What happen if just explode it?"

"Good question. We’ve no idea. But it could be catastrophic, so we’re not going to rush anything." He smiled, a less sad smile this time. "Now if you could be convinced to become homesick for the Pillars, wouldn’t that be an interesting development?"

"No thanks."

He left then, with a little wave and no words of reassurance. I didn’t miss that he hadn’t denied any of my little paranoid theories, but I was also sorry I’d made him feel bad.

-

And it’s an hour or so later and my access rights have returned. Back to the way they were when I was living with the Lents. And because I appreciate the gesture I’ll keep pushing through kindergarten, and will make sure I work before I play. Maze really is a nice guy.

When the bell rings, drool

It’s a very odd thing to be able to record all your conversations so easily. I wonder if I’ll run out of hard drive to store them on. But I love that I can replay my conversation with my family, which was about the only thing that made up for having barely any interface rights for so long. Even going back to having a full interface – with all the news and television and entertainments I didn’t even know existed – I replay pieces of my birthday party over and over again. I can see all the nuances I didn’t catch the first time, can look at their faces, look at the garden Mum loves. The Aunts are watching Mum, looking relieved. Dad bites his lip. Jules is just loving the whole thing, thinking it all so cool. Mum is…Mum.

I’m exasperated, though, about other parts of that day I keep replaying. Maybe it’s because he saved my life, or because I spent a good two hours holding his hand. I keep telling myself not to and then watching my log of the Fourth Squad captain gazing off at the stars. A stupid thing to do: he didn’t make a positive impression personality-wise, not to mention calling me a stray right in front of me. Kaoren Ruuel. Not the usual type I daydream about, but I seem to be far more excited about him in retrospect than I was when I was clutching his hand.

Other than not having enough willpower, it’s been an eventful day. Mara came after breakfast, dressed in casual clothes instead of her uniform. We collected my belongings and she took me to my new box. Which wasn’t a box at all.

"This is the latest expansion of the Setari living quarters, intended for Thirteenth and Fourteenth Squad," she said, as we walked down a short, empty corridor. She stopped at the end, triggering the door. "The rest of us are on the floors below. Until the new squads are qualified, you’ll be the only person here."

It was a whole apartment, the same layout as Zan’s, except no decorations displayed in the public space and incredibly neutral coverings on the whitestone furniture. Mara smiled at the expression on my face and said: "The doors will open to you. I’ll take you on a tour of some of the areas you’re permitted to go, and then into the city, if there’s anything you’d like to buy. Outside KOTIS is completely off limits to you without an escort and clearance."

"What change their minds?"

"Maze suggested your intelligence be re-evaluated. Before you decided to stop being obliging and cooperative."

They thought I was stupid. I chewed on that one for the rest of the day, but otherwise let myself enjoy the change. There was more to the KOTIS facility than I’d expected, including some actual leisure areas populated by large amounts of people my age and younger, making me realise just how many Setari they’re trying to train. But the exciting thing for me was going shopping. I’m not exactly a mall devotee, but when you’ve had everything supplied to you for weeks, simply buying a dressing gown or choosing your very own bedspread becomes a big event. Fortunately my displaced person allowance had been accruing.

Mara was really tolerant, and answered my endless, scrambled questions as if she had nothing else she’d like to do. We had lunch together and, just as I had back when she was showing me around KOTIS, I kept noticing people recognising her. A member of First Squad. Even if people outside KOTIS can’t record her image, in the facility’s support city there were a lot of people who knew who she was, or were from KOTIS taking a break. It put the Kanza game in a different light. I knew but hadn’t really thought through how very much all the Setari are faceless celebrities on this world, the people everyone wants to know. And I get to spend all this time with them, and can’t let myself buy into it.

I’d told Maze that I thought First Squad were nice to me because they were nice people. But I am just as much an assignment to them as I was to Zan; they simply approach the task differently. Every time I start thinking about how nice they are and how much I like them, I hear: "Don’t forget the psychological aspects," and remember that I’m part of their job. Helping them feels like the right thing to do, but it’s not necessarily the right thing for me.

I really miss Alyssa, miss having someone I trusted absolutely, and I wish I knew whether Nick has told her everything that happened, and if she believed him. Mum’s not silly enough to announce to the world that her daughter is off on another planet, no matter whether they succeeded in videoing me. I’d give it a week before Jules posts that phone video on YouTube, though.

I thanked Mara carefully when she delivered me back to my brand spanking-new apartment, putting a lot of effort into pronunciation. I might be an assignment to First Squad, but I appreciate that they don’t rub that in.

Mara told me where and when to meet tomorrow, since we had a lot of training to catch up on, and then left me alone. With a door I can open. It’s a test of sorts, I guess. From practically no freedom to quite a lot, to see how I’ll react. I went out straight away and up to the roof, where it was evening, and blowing an absolute gale – not raining, but super windy. Fortunately, I’d taken my brand new jacket with me, and found a corner to tuck myself in to think, and read through the instructions Mara had shown me on how to change the public spaces in my rooms. Simply loving that I was able to walk up there on my own, and I could go back when I wanted to.

I don’t trust them not to take this away from me again. So far they’ve chopped and changed their approach to me several times, and could easily decide it’s better to keep me in a box. In its way this is just another bit of positive reinforcement training. But I’m happy enough to keep being cooperative in return for an unlocked door.

I’m missing home a lot today. But I really really hope I don’t wake up tomorrow and find that I’ve gone tearing off through the spaces again. I need a better understanding of just what the spaces are, what natural gates are, before I even begin to think of experimenting. There’s an entire world of information which I’ve just been given access to, and I need to go do more kindergarten so I can hope to understand some of it.

They thought I was stupid.

Wednesday, February 13

Settling in

So, my apartment has three and a bit rooms. The bedroom is a little larger than my original box in the medical facility, with a lot more cupboard space. The bed’s a double bed, too, instead of the narrower hospital-type bed. I had a lot of trouble deciding on what kind of bedspread to buy, and ended up with a dark green one with a pattern of leaves and tiny white and pink flowers.

The kitchen part of the main room has a small refrigerator and cooker and a sink, plus bench and cupboard. Given the Setari can get all their meals from their canteen, there’s no need to do a lot of food preparation in the apartments, but at least it’s possible.

There’s a coffee table and a matched pair of two-seater lounges facing each other over it. All very plain, and nothing you wouldn’t find in any Australian home, though made with a light, possibly hollow frame that seems vaguely related to whitestone. Wood is far too rare here to be used for basic furniture.

I think I’d like to get some throw rugs to put across the lounges. There’s no television or sound system or anything like that because all that’s inside your head, which makes the lounge look rather bare. The study nook is not really a study nook, I think. After all, I haven’t seen a printed book or file yet, let alone anyone writing by hand, so why would you need a table designed for writing? Maybe it’s meant to be a breakfast table? An upright chair and a table, anyway. It’s a good place for me to write in my diary, even if it’s not what it’s meant for.

I really wish I’d brought my pippin statue with me. I only had it for a couple of weeks on Muina, but it was almost like having a pet.

I love the fact that I have a bath, and I did a lot of soaking in it last night, trying to read one of the novels I found in the vast array in my head. I should have bought some bubble bath, presuming it exists here. Bath oils and bath salts and maybe a rubber ducky. The shower is both a shower and a nanoshower. When you tell your nanosuit to go away, it drains down to your legs then kind of spins together and shoots out a special drain. It makes me wonder if all the Setari are all using the same pool of nanoliquid, which is a grotty and funny and disgusting idea. One size fits all taken to new levels.

I’m dressed in my uniform now, waiting for it to be time for me to go to training, and hopefully not get lost! Mara told me that if I have any kind of official assignment – training or meetings or even a medical exam – I’m to wear my nanosuit. I still wish it was a different colour, so people would know I’m not pretending to be a Setari.

Combat Room 3

Full day of training with First Squad today, both before and after lunch. We met at Combat Room 3, one with lots of shielding, and they borrowed a guy called Nils from Second Squad to make illusions of common sorts of Ionoth attacking us while they worked out the best way to use my enhancement while not putting me in too much danger. It was like an elaborate game of tag, and I felt so useless and awkward, especially when Nils had some really nasty illusion-Ionoth swarm the spot I was standing, and had to be rescued. Nils' illusions can’t really properly show the effects of the Ionoth being hit, since they have no substance, but I didn’t like a dozen of them pouncing toward me.

Ketzaren is my primary minder, since she has strong Levitation. If they need to move me quickly, she gives me an order and I have to put my arm around her shoulder. She grabs me around the waist and binds our suits together and then she levitates herself and I get brought along, which overcomes the fact that they can’t put Levitation directly on me when they’re enhanced. Her other talents are Ena manipulation, which seems to be what they use when they’re trying to lock the gates, and Wind manipulation. Wind is a slow-build talent, so only occasionally used in combat.

First Squad was really pleased with how the training went, and they met up with some more of Second Squad for dinner afterwards and talked through strategies and possibilities. Maze was good at making this not an uncomfortable conversation for me, and I was okay with it anyway, since I’d decided that my role was like a caddie for a bunch of professional golfers. I don’t do any of the hitting of balls, but I make the day a little easier for them.

The leader of Second Squad is called Grif Regan, and he’s a very serious type who likes to listen more than talk. Nils, by contrast, is overwhelming. If you took the lead singer of The Doors (forgot his name) and crossed him with Marilyn Monroe, you’d get something like Nils. A really pretty guy who oozes sex. He treats Zee like she’s a particularly delectable mouse, but Zee just ignores him. He also asked me if everyone on Earth could speak with their hands and I explained about my aunt being deaf and we sidetracked into a long discussion about Earth and things which are different between the worlds.

But the question was a useful reminder that everyone here can record everything they hear and see, and even feel, though that’s an extra setting and not one I’m keen on using. And when Setari are on missions, what they record they put in mission reports, so everything Ruuel saw me do or say in the Ena has apparently been reviewed by whole bunches of people. It made me very glad I hadn’t kept trying to talk to Ruuel, and hadn’t done too much shrieking or squealing while panicking. And means I’m sure as hell not going to say anything during official assignments that I couldn’t bear being watched by a hundred people.

No wonder Zan wouldn’t gossip.

I went up to the roof again after dinner, just because I could, and because I could see stars up there now that the sun’s fully set. Tomorrow will be more training, but Maze said that if they’re happy with how it goes they’ll consider going into the Ena with me again, this time to kill things.

Must remember to work the conversation around to different types of gates.

Thursday, February 14

Bubble worlds

Morning was dodging practice with Mara, which went well except for when I dodged in precisely the wrong way and got a ball in the face. I’m not very good at predicting where she’s going to throw the things and that seems to be half of what dodging’s all about.

I asked her if I was allowed to go swimming just for fun instead of it being for training, and she laughed and said yes and told me where to look to see whether anyone had booked the pool. But then later she said that for now it’d be better if she just added the pool into our training schedule, so I guess she checked with someone who decided there was too much chance of me drowning or something.

Over lunch, she explained a little more about spaces and gates. Spaces shift about. Some move only a little, bobbing up and down. Others apparently rotate, like planets. A few even zoom about: little comets on an astral level. And when they move, the connections which were the gates between them shift also, vanishing altogether, or linking up with other spaces, or just phasing briefly out of alignment. Setari with Ena manipulation skills are able to lock the gates, preventing them from shifting, but unless it’s between two relatively stable spaces, it’s immensely difficult to hold them for more than a day or two, and there’s even an argument about whether it’s a bad thing altogether, given that it’s similar to what the Pillars do.

Four of the gates back toward the Pillar we found are stable, shifting only a little, and it’s become part of the regular rotation of the Setari teams to go and firm the locks up. The gate into the space with all the platforms is gone. There’s a different talent which allows you to read the gates, and tell how long they will last, but they can’t tell for certain if and when that gate will rotate back. They think (are hoping really hard) that the platform space is a rotational space, and that eventually the gate will realign again and they’ll be able to lock it for another few days. Until then they check every day and puzzle over the readings they took from the space with the Pillar.

I didn’t want to press too obviously about natural gates, how they’re different, and how hard it might be to find one.

After lunch we joined up with the rest of First Squad, and this time all of Second Squad joined us. After testing the effect of me on their talent range, they worked with First Squad on a really big game of tag-team combat. They’ve been set a minimum time they have to wait between each person touching me, and then they have to keep track of how long the enhancement will last, which is a little over five minutes, always. Nils made illusory monsters again, and the two squads worked through fighting and enhancing while keeping to their rules. Then we took a break while Maze and the Second Squad captain, Grif, talked through different ways of managing me, and which talents it was best to enhance.

I was sitting on a bench next to Lohn and Nils and asked: "Is worth it? Stronger, maybe, but so complicate."

"Definitely, absolutely," Lohn said. "When I think of some of the situations we’ve been in, when the problem was sheer lack of fire power! The effect on some of the more esoteric talents, like Combat Sight, is incredibly hard to quantify, but I wouldn’t give it up."

"Just the speed alone is worth it," Nils added. "It almost makes the thought of doing Columns Rotation bearable."

"Think how that last massive battle would have gone," Lohn said, and they glanced at each other and looked away.

"Massive?" I repeated. The word they used was kadara, but it seemed to have the same meaning as ddura. "Ddura?"

"Different sort," Nils said. He lifted his hand and conjured an illusion of a four-legged black thing as tall as the three-story room, with swarms of miniature Setari buzzing around its long, spindly ankles. Everyone else in First and Second Squad jumped and gave him a look, but he just waved at them. "They turn up very occasionally, crashing their way between the spaces rather than travelling through them, and end up in near-space. It took eight squads to take this one down."

"If we don’t spot them, they can reach real space. That was a bad year." Lohn scrubbed a hand across his face, then smiled at me. "It’s not so complicated, either – we’re just taking turns patting you on the shoulder on a timer. So what do you say, Maze?" he called. "We going to do this for real tomorrow?"

"Pending clearance by medical," Maze said, coming over. "And clearance by you, Caszandra. You’ve seen something of what we can run into out there, and that was neither the weakest nor the worst thing we might encounter. Are you ready to do this?"

I’d seen enough by now to know that none of the Setari were completely confident of returning when they went into the spaces. Maze was asking a really serious question. And the spaces I’d gone through with Ruuel had scared me, had made abundantly clear that there was danger and horror involved. I didn’t want any part of that.

"Long as don’t have ran up stair," I said after a moment. "That hardest bit."

Maze smiled, but gravely, and nodded at me. "It will be one of the more straightforward rotations," he said. "I’ll schedule it, dependant on the results of the medical."

After the medics cleared me, Alay and Ketzaren took me to dinner. Alay’s the most quiet and reserved of First Squad, but really lovely when she laughs. She’s what people call gamine, and wears her hair short, though little random curls sproing out. I think Ketzaren, who is very dry and sardonic, was deliberately setting out to cheer Alay up, and it was only after they’d delivered me back to my apartment that I thought about why, about the reasons First and Second Squad often look tired and sad.

I don’t want to go into the spaces hunting Ionoth. I’m scared about the trip tomorrow. And of all the trips after that which I’ll be in for if I let myself be conscripted by an alien military organisation to fight a problem which has been growing steadily worse. I fully intend to go home.

But then there’s First Squad. They’ve been doing this for years. Fighting nightmares. And getting hurt. I haven’t missed that there were originally three senior Setari squads, but now there only seems to be two. I can’t bring myself to ask what happened to the other one.

And I’ve been writhing silently at the thought of saying: "Thanks for saving my life, but not my problem. I’ll go home now and try not to think too hard about whether you’re dead yet".

But I want to go home.

Wearing the Setari uniform makes me feel so fake.

Friday, February 15

Rememories

I started out the day by spotting Zan in the canteen. She was eating dinner – Twelfth Squad is on a different shift than me at the moment – but after I picked out some breakfast I asked if I could join her and she of course was polite and said yes.

"You look tired," I said, since I refuse to be all stilted and formal with her. "Is rotation bad?"

"No injuries so far," Zan said, being her usual correct self. But then she actually asked me a question, which is progress. "You’re scheduled to start a rotation today?"

I nodded, wondering if for the rest of my life people would know more about what I’m doing than I do myself. "When Setari off-duty?" I asked. "Never know if what say go into mission reports."

"It would be truer to say we’re off-shift, not off-duty. All time in the Ena is fully logged, and most training sessions, but I would have no reason to report on this conversation, for instance. Besides, you’re on second level monitoring."

The way she paused made it clear that she wished she hadn’t said that, so naturally I asked what second level monitoring was, and appreciated that she didn’t avoid answering.

"It means your life signs monitor, along with everything you do, you’re recording internally – separately from any private recording you make. The record isn’t reviewed unless there’s an incident which needs verification or investigation, such as when you vanished into the Ena."

I suppose I wasn’t that surprised deep-down, but that didn’t stop me from feeling absolutely exposed. I must have gone brick red.

"Everyone can look at?"

"No." Zan made her voice as firm and clear as possible. "There are very strict rules about such reviews, and they can be performed only for a clear reason, by those with the very highest security clearance. No-one in the Setari has anywhere close to that level. But a selected extract of your record was appended to Tsee Ruuel’s report on your recovery, showing your attempt to open a gate into your world."

"Monitoring used criminals?"

Zan was looking distracted, but nodded. "Or children considered at risk."

Or conscripted strays, I thought. In a way I’m almost glad, because every time I start to think about being heroically self-sacrificing, the words "second level monitoring" are going to help me immensely.

I looked up as Maze put a tray on the table next to me and sat down, his mouth set. I was willing to bet he was the reason Zan had been distracted, that they’d been having a silent conversation about what I’d asked and how she’d answered.

"Do Tare have saying here," I asked, before he could say anything, "Who watches watchers?"

He blinked, then gave me one of those tired, super-nice smiles: "I think I’ve heard some variation of that. But the restrictions on monitoring are very tight."

"Is ever likely be less monitored?"

"I don’t know. Perhaps if we gain a proper understanding of your talent set. And you stop nearly dying."

I felt like arguing, demanding that I be taken off, but I could see by the way he was steeling himself that there was no hope so I held my tongue. "When everyone talk using surnames, that when official recording, right?"

"Usually. Or habit. Formality is a discipline." He glanced across at Zan, who was being super quiet and proper while she finished her dinner. "Unnecessary, I suppose, but the competitive atmosphere fosters it."

"During rotation, consistent naming is common sense," Zan said. She paused, then stood up, lifting her tray. "Good luck today, Cassandra." With a nod to Maze she left.

A first time for everything. And she’d pronounced it correctly. Pleased, I made myself forget about starring in my own reality show, and concentrate on eating my breakfast. And toyed with the idea of asking Maze if he knew or cared that half the younger Setari had the hots for him. Or why they bullied Zan. But it would be unfair, since Zan was really bothered by Maze, to go talking about her with him.

After we’d eaten, Maze gave me a lesson on extra equipment we would take while on a mission. A little food and water, a very tiny medical pack, and the breather, in case we encountered a flooded zone. Zee joined us, and reminded me practically to go to the bathroom, and then we went down and met the others at another of the sealed-up gates. I could tell by the way Zee was watching me that she and Maze had discussed second level monitoring before she arrived, but by that time I’d moved through annoyed to resigned, and switched back to being worried about gallivanting through the Ena killing monsters.

"Is all spaces okay atmosphere?" I asked, making a pocket for my breather.

"Usually," Ketzaren said. "Sometimes the air is not very pleasant, but we’ve yet to encounter one which was toxic. The theory is that only certain atmosphere types create a truly living world. Or that we are not truly breathing."

"Why this easy rotation?"

"Because it’s short, there’s nothing smart, and it never changes," Lohn said, grimacing in the middle of some slow stretches. "And it leads to Unara, as at least a quarter of all rotations do, so there’s usually not much going on in near-space either."

Maze took over talking, in captain-mode. "In addition to Tare’s near-space, we will be travelling through four spaces. The first is always bare. The second will be insects – small, and in swarms. We are not likely to allow any to get close to us, but if one strikes you, the antidote to their poison is in your medpack. After the second space we will return to Tare’s near-space and search for any Ionoth which have reached it from neighbouring spaces. The first space on the return trip is only occasionally inhabited, and the Ionoth which spawn there are large and quite slow. The last space contains three winged Ionoth. Spel will move you if necessary. Ready?"

I nodded, though my breakfast was considering not coming along. That sick feeling stayed with me the entire time, for all the mission itself went exactly the way Maze said. We crossed through near-space to a baked and dying field of plants, then to a meadow crawling with over-sized bugs which made the mistake of gathering into groups and coming at us. Lohn touched my elbow and fried them instantly, his Light wall blocking any chance of them getting close.

And then we were somewhere in the bowels of Unara, in a wind-blasted tube taller than a house which Mara said was one of the air channels which power Unara and keep it breathing. We walked along it, not finding a single Ionoth, then stepped into the bottom of a canyon with a thin stream running down the middle, and a hulking bull with wide horns crashing along one bank. All of First Squad simply went up, Ketzaren hooking me into her side and lifting effortlessly. We floated above as it ramped about, crashing and snorting, until Mara dropped down and finished it with a single, swift stroke of her Light whip. I could smell it, burnt flesh rising to cut through rank, musty animal scent, and decided to eat smaller breakfasts as we lifted up further to a gate into a forest clearing. Lohn, who was unenhanced by this time, shot three Light bolts at three precise points around the clearing, and three feathery things crashed to the ground. Then back to near-space, and through to the KOTIS facility.

Though they were as crisply professional as always, it was clear that the run had been incredibly easy for First Squad, that they knew exactly what to do before entering each space, and had been most interested in testing out their altered abilities. Maze and Zee escorted me down to medical so that all three of us could be scanned for side-effects, and discussed the effect on Combat Sight, which picks up hostile intent. They were very pleased that this doesn’t seem to be distorted. It was a good introduction, and I’m not quite so worried about the next rotation. Nothing came even close to me, and though I didn’t find the killing easy to watch, I can perfectly understand not wanting any of those things running loose on Tare.

But it’s endless, this fight. Because for all they kill off the Ionoth, the spaces still remember them, and they come back and have to be killed again. Memories. The Unara Rotation was so easy because First had done it hundreds of times, and knew exactly what the Ionoth would be and how they would behave. Over and over, an infinite number, and First Squad’s already been fighting them too long.

Saturday, February 16

The Watched

This morning I found myself avoiding looking down while dressing, and staying turned away from the mirror. Then I made myself look, because what did I have left to hide? I’d spent the night wondering if second level monitoring logs were ever deleted, or if there’d be a permanent record of me farting in the bath and laughing at the bubbles. Inspecting my armpits. Every single thing I do in the bathroom.

I don’t think I’ll ever dare masturbate again.

It didn’t occur to me to look up the laws concerning second level monitoring until breakfast. I’m too used to being kept in a box with no view of the outside. Second level monitoring is almost like parole here, far more common than I expected. There’s layers and layers of rules and controls about when the logs can be uplifted, but it’s an accepted part of the Taren justice system. There’s even a third level monitoring, where you’re basically live-streaming your life. Some people here actually do that for the kicks.

The encyclopaedia entry I found handily told me the history of the laws which had led to second level monitoring, and I guess it’s a logical progression from things like the CCTV and GPS bracelets, and I can understand why they’d put a lab rat like me on it, but NOT HAPPY, JAN.

Until I can figure out how to safely get home, I’ll just have to put up with it, but I did need to degrump myself before leaving to meet Mara. The Setari are assigned rotations every second day, so I’ll be going into the Ena again tomorrow, and I’m scheduled in for three more rotations with First Squad after that. Between I have training and medical appointments. In a few days I also have a session scheduled with Eighth Squad and later Third Squad, to review my effect on their talent list. Then a day with nothing scheduled, but I’m not sure if it counts as a day off or they just haven’t put anything there yet.

This morning I had swimming with Mara, and Zee and Ketzaren came along as well. They’re all so incredibly fit. I can just about beat them if I swim freestyle while they breaststroke, but even though they’ve only been swimming a couple of years they outpace me easily if we’re doing the same stroke. Mara’s such a taskmaster – after we played around for a while she made me do laps while she monitored my heartbeat. And then she scheduled in some running for me as well, for afternoons, though she says I don’t have to wait for any of them to join me for that. Running is not my idea of fun, though I think maybe I could do my schoolwork at the same time as running, which is useful, or watch television or whatever.

I’m doing quite well with this year’s schoolwork, though I’m not pushing through it nearly as hard as I did the previous year’s. And I’m starting to find my way around all the vast array of the parts of the interface which I now have access to. I watch news programs, and am constantly surprised by stories of violence. I kept imagining this place as relatively crime-free, especially thanks to second level monitoring, but bad things still happen here. And there’s sports reporting, and gossip and politics and business, all of which is this mass of confusion to me because they don’t explain who the people are and I have to look them up to work out what’s going on. I usually don’t bother, just let all the sounds wash over me while I look at the images.

With the entertainment options and discussion boards and games there’s so much out there that I’ve been too overwhelmed to do more than browse. I read the beginnings of books, watch the beginnings of shows, follow links, but keep moving on. Schoolwork comes as a relief after that because it’s so structured. I started watching that Setari/Songstar show that Nenna liked so much, but it’s really silly and young. I found a different one called The Hidden War which is also about the Setari, but much more serious and with no singing so far. There are years and years of it, though, and while I found out how to watch it from the beginning, I’ve only skipped through a couple of episodes. It starts out with this girl called Nori being in the not-yet-qualified-as-a-Setari part of KOTIS, and I’ll probably go back to it when I’m in a better mood.

The planet is seriously obsessed with the Setari. It’s not surprising. Earth would be the same, but give them less privacy[2]. As it is, I’ve found these huge discussion boards which are all about people talking about sightings of Setari. They can’t take photographs of them, and their name display shows random names, but every sighting of them is tracked, and people draw pictures using art programs. It’s very rare for Setari to be seen anywhere except Konna, and rarer still for them to go out in uniform. Hordes of people want to live on Konna, just because of the Setari. I already felt, the couple of times I’ve been into the city, the sense of lots of people watching, and the extra-smile factor of shop assistants, but it’s apparently against some kind of rule to run up and ask the Setari for autographs, which is fortunate or they probably wouldn’t be able to go out at all.

There were descriptions of our Kanza game on those forums. There were great big dossiers on First Squad. They don’t know what they’re called or anything, but they’ve given them all code names and link the sightings together, and now there’s a dossier started on me. They think I’m a Kalrani or newly graduated Setari, or possibly just a relative of someone in First Squad. I spent lunch reading through a bunch of posts of people giving really frank opinions of what I looked like (6/10) and how I acted. 6! I think I’m a 7, really, but I guess I was standing next to Zee a lot of the time.

It amazes me that any of the Setari ever poke their noses out of KOTIS.

Sunday, February 17

Lights Rotation

Today’s rotation was called Lights Rotation.

The first space was up on a mountain, all grass and tumbled rocks and flowers on a slope so high there was cloud below. We’re settling into a routine for being a squad-with-useful-stray. Before going through each gate, Mara and Maze, who both have Combat Sight and Speed talent, touch my arm to enhance themselves, then take lead. They go through as close together as they can, and just like when I was with Ruuel, the rest of us only come through when they signal.

This time, as soon as Maze was through, he dived abruptly left – so fast it was almost like he vanished – and something flashed after him. Mara followed in a rush, and just as quickly ran right, her Light whip striking out from one hand. None of the rest of First Squad enjoyed staying put, but they did, very tense and prepared. I was wondering how long they had to wait before going without a signal, but Mara came back almost straight away and Lohn and Zee went through followed by me and my Ketzaran/Alay escort. Lohn brushed a hand against my arm and was off.

The things they were fighting were like gargoyles. Or bats with wolfish faces, all grey-skinned. The sky above the mountainside was thick with them, and they dived like hawks, incredibly fast. Ketzaren’s Wind manipulation abilities were really useful there. It’s not the same kind of instant-hit that Lohn’s Light wall is, but if she sets up enough movement in the air, it grows to cyclonic levels. It made it incredibly hard for the gargoyles to fly, and funnelled them together really handily.

That space was huge, too. It took almost an hour for First Squad to chase down all the gargoyles, and I noticed a few escaped through other gates, and that one of the things First Squad were trying to do was prevent that, although they wouldn’t chase them through the gates. It was also by far the worst time I’d had with First Squad, because there’s no way slaughtering a couple of hundred animals could be anything but awful. The Ionoth might just be memories, but they still don’t want to be killed. Being Setari is a really horrible job.

It was only when the very last of them was gone that First Squad said anything more than "There," or "To the left". Maze called for a break, and we all sat down on some rocks and had a drink and some of the molasses-tasting food bars. Using their powers takes an awful lot out of the Setari, especially over such a long period of time, and they were sweating and looking drained. In a way it annoys me that it doesn’t take me any effort to enhance them. I’d feel less like a useless spectator if it at least made me tired.

"That was more than twice as many as the last time we did this space," Zee said, after drinking thirstily.

Maze nodded. "I’ll recommend reclassification of the rotation."

"Don’t understand how ecology work here," I said. "Do Ionoth need eat? Or just attack people out habit?"

"It varies," Lohn said. "In some spaces the Ionoth don’t have any apparent food source, and we’ve never verified if they have to eat, but they often turn on each other or start to roam, preying on whatever they can find until separation from their home space causes them to fade. There are others, roamers and static, which are not aggressive and don’t have any interest in us at all. If we do Boulders Rotation, you’ll see the Tenders. They notice but never attack us, so we leave them be, as we do anything not classified as a threat."

"It’s a big job keeping up with all the known types," Alay said. "But a lot easier dealing with types already encountered than new varieties."

Maze called the end of the break then – they don’t like to hang around in the spaces unnecessarily – and we went into the next space, which was a single short corridor with a couple of gates in it. All the doors were outlines, showing only blackness. and First Squad were really tense as they passed through it. They said that they’d occasionally encountered very unusual Ionoth in there, but there was nothing this time.

Next was the reason it was called Lights Rotation. It was a night time space with lots of huge overarching trees by a lake, and there were floating balls of light everywhere, about the size of two fists together. It was the coldest space I’ve been in yet, and everyone’s breath came out smoky. The lake was black and mirror-still and reflected the glowing balls. Maze had explained before we went through that there were usually only one or two creatures in this space, but that they were fast, and clever enough not to just jump out and be killed. That was a rather nerve-wracking space, because after enhancing themselves, Lohn, Mara, Zee and Maze all disappeared off into the dark and Alay and Ketzaren and I waited by the gate. I turned on the names in my interface again, but could only see where Maze and Zee had gone. And then, while I was craning to see the others, Alay leaned forward and the chilly silence was ripped apart by a high vibrating sound, followed by a shrieking yowl accompanying a black shape falling out of one of the trees. Alay has a sonic talent which seems to only be useful when she can take a few moments to build it and, importantly, none of her squad are anywhere near what she’s trying to take down.

The last space was like a ghost town in a Western: old, falling apart, little more than the shells of buildings on a dusty plain. In the middle of the town were square wooden frames, and tied to the squares with barbed wire were the shapes of people. Black shadows with no features at all, like a person had had all their skin had burned away and then been covered in dusty ink. They looked like they were in pain, being tortured like the shadows on the pyramids. First Squad approached incredibly cautiously, scanning every building as we approached the frames, making sure nothing was lurking, and stopped at the edge of the central square with the frames.

"These are seen in a number of spaces," Alay said. "Most notably on the Columns Rotation. They are one of the most dangerous of the Ionoth, and frequently reach near-space and sometimes real-space."

One of the shadows reacted to the sound of her voice, eyes opening to slits. And then a mouth appeared on the darkness of the face, out of nothing like the Cheshire Cat’s does in Alice of Wonderland, but stretching up into the nastiest grin you could imagine. It was all light inside, the shadows burning white within. And what I’d thought was pain was a kind of exultation.

Then Maze set the entire thing burning, all the frames and the shadows on them. He was still enhanced, and called down a pillar of flame in an absolute Wrath of God moment, shocking me. First Squad, except for Mara who continued scanning the area for anything coming, all stood and watched in silence. It was pretty clear they hated these things.

"Most monsters my world are people," I said, feeling inadequate. "These memories of people?"

"Not anything I’d class as a person," Alay said, very firm and sharp for someone usually so quiet. "Time to head back?"

Maze nodded, and we went back through the same set of spaces, with Ketzaren pausing at every gate and enhancing herself before locking them as much as possible. Even though we’d just been through them all, First Squad stayed alert and ready for attack right up until we stepped back into real-space.

This time, an alert flashed in our mission display when we were being scanned. "You’ve got a stickie, Zee," Maze said, and she groaned and walked away from us to a corner of the box.

"Stickie is?" I asked.

"A very weak variety of Ionoth, but with an ability to conceal itself even from Sight talents. They’re parasites, feeding off human hosts. When they’re stronger, they can copy themselves to new hosts through physical contact, and–"

"Are a plaguish nuisance," Zee put in, arms crossed.

"If they’re left too long, they begin to corrupt their hosts," Lohn added, grinning.

"They’re removed using sonics," Maze continued, as if they hadn’t interrupted, then gave Zee a sympathetic smile. "Also known as an Instant Headache Treatment. Hopefully the rest of us won’t finish the day so uncomfortably."

We split up then. After missions, showers and rest are very high on First Squad’s list of things to do, and I guess Maze gets to file a mission report. The rotations seem designed to last only a couple of hours, and there’s never training or anything like that afterwards because it takes so much out of them. I showered, ever-amused by my nanoliquid uniform, and then grabbed some portable food from the canteen and went up to the roof.

It’s still night, but it was very clear and not too windy and it was nice to sit and watch the stars. I wasn’t really surprised when Lohn and Mara showed up. They take babysitting as seriously as they do killing Ionoth.

"What’s the attraction?" Lohn asked, sprawling down next to me. "Black, black, black and some stars?"

"The wind," I said, after thinking about it. "And there insects here – they sound crickets – insects from home. And temperature changes. And different smells."

"Not many would consider these things positive," Lohn said. "Besides, we had all that in Lights Rotation, didn’t we? Except perhaps this chirping."

"Too busy being nervous enjoy."

"You hide it well," Mara said. "Maze wanted us to check how you’re holding up to all this."

I like Mara for being very open about Stray mental health checks. She’s a really straightforward person.

"Is awful," I said. "Killing things. Spaces very interesting, Ionoth horrible. Obvious." I shrugged. "But not overwhelm. First Squad not scared. Save panic for when First Squad is."

This made Lohn laugh. "Worse philosophies, I suppose."

"One night Muina, most scared ever," I said. "Been walk eleven days, sick eat bad fruit. Sleep on hill under mat made leaves. Something big walk up to me. Foot came down mat, right next head. Sniff me. Lay there listen to it. Then it go away. Lots panic. Watch very deadly Setari toast bugs easier."

They both shut up at that one, then Lohn slung an arm around my shoulders and squeezed tight. "You’ve a way of putting things in perspective. But you’ll let us know if there’s anything troubling you?"

"Sure." Since I’d succeeded in putting second level monitoring into perspective for myself as well, I thought about other things I could ask them, then said: "What Eighth Squad like?"

"Ah, you’re due to do enhancement testing with them tomorrow, right? Well, Kanato’s solid, very level-headed. Eighth is one of the big punch squads, so we can expect some exciting damage to the test areas, I’d bet."

"Have decided long-term what do with me?"

"Too early. There’s a lot of debate, and some competing interests. They won’t have you actively working with the younger squads for quite a while, since having a talent set so increased and then reverting it might have a negative impact on them. In theory we’re too old and wise to have our heads turned as badly." He laughed. "I gather Seventh Squad is not very happy with Eighth for being selected to test with you."

I drew my knees up to my chin. "Cloning legal Tare?" I asked carefully, and felt the depth of their silence.

"Cloning will not reproduce a talent set," Mara said eventually. "Kolar tried it not long ago, and although there’s some pattern similarity, it seems that there’s more to talents than simple genetics. Since they haven’t found a way to make clones with an adequate lifespan, there’s a ban on human cloning here."

But there’d obviously been a lot of debate about quite a few things.

"Be really good way make me want be anywhere but here," I said softly. "That good thing to add today’s report." And then, because I hated making First Squad feel bad, I added: "Six billion people my planet. Bet Cass not only one enhance skill. Hope they look harder for natural gate, get chance show First Squad my home."

Mara put a hand on my shoulder. "We’ll do that. Besides, the real solution’s the Pillars, not increasing our ability to kill Ionoth. You can be sure we’ll be throwing all our resources into taking advantage of the stroke of luck your visit home brought."

It isn’t necessarily an endless war. It’s good to remember that.

Monday, February 18

Eighth Squad

It’s a weird feeling to have a group of strangers all eager for me to show up. Or really eager to try out what their powers are like enhanced, anyway.

Eighth Squad is one of the Setari teams stacked with high impact talents instead of being more all-round. They’re not usually used for spaces that require close fighting: there’s apparently some spaces where you don’t want to go in and make things explode because parts of the spaces explode right back. Memories of oil refineries, perhaps. And there’s some Ionoth that you have to kill by hitting them because it’s a bad idea using psionics on them.

Eighth’s captain is Ro Kanato. He tracked me down about half an hour before I was due to meet them, to introduce himself, show me the way to a new test room, and double-check my preferences for people grabbing hold of me. He kept making references to the rules which had been set up regarding my handling. I’d love to be able to read these rules, and the reports and things filed about me, but though I’ve access to the public parts of the interface, there’s an awfully large amount of the KOTIS network which I can’t look at. I’d like to be able to look up more information about the rotations I’m assigned to before going into them. Although maybe that would be a bad idea and give me nightmares. Hard to tell.

Kanato is about my height, with long black hair which he catches up in a ponytail, and he comes across as unfussed with a mild-mannered efficiency that turns mountains into molehills. I kept wondering where I’d heard his voice until I recognised it as the person who’d first spoken to Ruuel from Fourth when we returned from my excursion, just sounding considerably less surprised. He’s not quite as correct as Zan, but all sensible and by-the-book, which kept me feeling less embarrassed than I might otherwise have been.

Test Room 2 is built for testing the high impact talents, divided into two by a massive amount of shielding, with the larger side full of angled walls of metal – targets – and the rest of Eighth Squad waiting on the safe side of the shielding. Two girls and another three guys, all polite and professional, with an edge of underlying excitement. Kanato introduced them in the order they were standing: "Henaz, Kade, Trouban, Bryze, Hasen. We’ll do a complete run of each skill set per person, starting with Hasen. Remember your instructions regarding contact. Anyone who fails to keep to the restrictions will spend the rest of the day on a training run."

Hasen was a tiny, bird-like girl with soft black hair cut really close to her skull, gorgeous dark brown eyes and darker skin than most Tarens. She stood before a hatchway which was the only opening to the other part of the test chamber and did the whole current strength base level test first. Her primary talent is Electricity, and she shot a fat bolt of it at a target a third of the way down the long length of the test chamber. It wasn’t like Lohn’s Light bolts, which are short bullets, but a literal lightning bolt, stretching all the way to the target. It left her breathing deeply, and there was a sharp ozone scent in the air and if it wasn’t for my uniform I think the hair on my arms would have been standing on end. The target made a thooming noise, and I watched through the thick, distorting viewport as some residual lightning played around the metal wall. There was an afterimage of it across my eyes.

"Now enhanced," Kanato said, after it had died down, and Hasen brushed the back of my wrist with her fingers. First Squad had decided it’s better for the Setari to handle the contact involved in the enhancement because there’s less communication lag, and they have far better reaction times than me. I was relieved that Eighth Squad had realised that they didn’t need more than a slight touch to be enhanced.

I think she was aiming for the same target. It was a little hard to tell since instead of a bolt shooting from her hand this huge round ball of white appeared about a quarter of the way into the room, arcing and spitting and drifting slowly away from us. The noise and smell of it was incredible, and I turned away and covered my ears, but could still feel the vibration of each strike. It didn’t last too long, fortunately, and died away to this stunned silence.

Kanato wasn’t quite managing to hide that he was having exactly the same "Whoa" reaction which Jules would have to something particularly cool and unexpected, which all of them were having, I guess. But after blinking a couple of times, he said: "We’ll target to the far end of the room in future, I think. Either of you experiencing any side-effects?"

I shrugged, and Hasen slowly shook her head. She looked so small and slight to have done so much.

"Re-test that at the far end of the room, then, so we can see if the result is the same."

It was. I did my usual weird things to Eighth Squad’s talents, but again the distortion remained consistent whenever it showed up. Fortunately most only had three or four talents each, but I was still feeling hungry and tired by the time Kanato called it a day and sent me off to the medical exam they make me go to after test sessions. The medics couldn’t decide whether I was feeling the impact of the enhancements or was just normally hungry and tired. Eighth Squad all looked exhausted after blasting all-out like that, so comparatively it’s still a negligible impact on me. I did snooze for a lot of the afternoon though, and slept through when I was supposed to go jogging (too bad, so sad).

Even though Eighth is closer to my age, I’d rather stay with First Squad, given the choice. I know that Eighth Squad was being all business and distracted by excitement and whatever, but Kanato was the only one who said a word to me the entire time. They weren’t being deliberately rude or anything: I think maybe they’re not sure how I fit into this very structured world they’ve been raised to accept. Like they haven’t been given permission to be social.

I didn’t mind them, though. It was funny watching them being so excited and trying not to show it.

Tuesday, February 19

Maze Rotation

Tsennel Rotation actually, but tsennel means labyrinth/maze. I’ve found a proper dictionary, to supplement my vague injected one, and have taken to looking up words and trying to fix the real definition and making annotations to connect to English.

Breakfast was with Maze, Zee, Mara and Lohn, to talk about the day’s assignment. Lohn, of course, thought it very funny when I said that in English maze could be labyrinth or corn if you just go by the way it’s pronounced, though it was a bit hard to describe what corn was beyond it being a yellow vegetable. Or grain? The Taren alphabet is really strange with its s, so I’m not entirely sure whether Maze or Mase is correct. They have an s, but use it mostly at the beginning of words, and then they use this ts letter a lot of the time, and there’s an awful lot of z when I would expect s, like how they pronounce my name Caszandra.

Anyway, Maze Rotation is what they consider a fairly tough assignment, partly because of its size and the need for close combat, and also because they’ve encountered new types of Ionoth there from time to time. Lohn was saying that the spaces we’ve worked in this week have been reasonably straightforward, and that now they were going to try me out in the weird and confusing territories. The way he talked about it made me wonder if the spaces weren’t so much the memories as the nightmares of planets.

"What toughest rotation?" I asked, as we walked to our assigned gate-lock.

"Unstables," Zee said. "Spaces which have moved up against Tare’s near-space, but which we haven’t encountered before. For everything else, even Columns, we know what we’re going up against, and they choose which teams to assign based on that. If we sent Eighth into Maze Rotation, for instance, they’d kill themselves in the first few minutes. While Ninth couldn’t handle Lights Rotation because you need strong ranged abilities for that mountainside. We can manage either, but at the same time neither is as easy as it would for a team with exactly the right talent set. It’s been a big step forward, having specialist teams."

"How long, younger teams active?"

"About seven years, for Three to Six. Eleven and Twelve, coming up on one year. Thirteen and Fourteen will be made active in the next year. The aim is to have sufficient squads to keep the near-space clear, and increase exploration and searches for the Pillars."

It took me a minute to remember that a year here was only four months. "How many Pillars are there?"

Zee lifted her hands, then let them drop. "We only confirmed three years ago that they truly exist. And, presuming that rotational space does realign, we’re only just coming up to our first chance to properly examine one. The knowledge of how the things were constructed, and what exactly they’re doing, has long been lost."

"Exciting days ahead," Lohn put in cheerfully, and then we reached our gate-lock and it was time for the mission to be officially logged and to call each other by surname and be all serious.

There were only two spaces involved in the Maze Rotation. The first seemed to be the inside of a house, all cramped walls and sketches of furniture and a shadow by a corner which might have once been an old lady. And then there was the maze.

It was exactly that: a huge maze of white stone covered in a climbing plant with small almond-shaped leaves. The walls looked to me to be really similar to the stone which the Taren and Muinan buildings are made of, so I guess it was a memory of one of those worlds, or another where the Muinans had gone. The walls were really high – twenty feet at least – and right above it the sky looked scratched and rubbed out. But there were clover flowers in the grassy paths below and it had an austere English garden feeling which made me like it despite it being dangerous.

"The walls have a resistance to talents," Maze said through the interface, once we were all through the gate. "Reflecting or dampening them unpredictably. We will be close-fighting almost exclusively in here, and keeping very near to each other. Avoid touching the walls; we’ve found that seems to draw increased attention from any Ionoth in the space. Follow Spel’s lead, staying on her left, and communicate only through the interface."

I nodded, and he started off, getting even more focused. First Squad is always serious while in the spaces, but I could tell by how tightly concentrated they all were that they’d meant it about it being tough. Everyone except Mara made long blades out of their suits, the first time I’d seen anyone except Ruuel use that. I still hadn’t figured out how to make any bits of the suit be more than tough rubber.

Staying on Ketzaren’s left put me in the centre of the six of them, and I noticed that Lohn, on my left, had his blade on his left arm instead of his right. I was only just within arms-length of any of them, so that they could reach to keep up their enhancements without risking accidentally bumping me.

"Coming up, mark seven, twenty in," came Maze’s voice over the interface. "Three rush."

Three rush apparently meant Maze, Mara and Zee would suddenly leap forward, while Lohn, Alay and Ketzaren closed about me and followed at a slower pace. We reached the corner just as something I couldn’t properly see leapt off one of the walls at Maze. Maze, Mara and Zee all have the Speed talent, and unenhanced they move amazingly. With enhancement, they come close to blurring instantaneously from one place to another. Plus both Maze and Mara have Combat Sight, which so far as I can tell is an ability to detect attacks almost before they happen. The thing didn’t really have a chance, in other words.

I only saw it properly when it was dead, and stopped being so difficult to look at. A lizard, like a gecko except with some uncomfortably humanoid lines to its scaly white body. And too much claw. Chameleons with attitude.

Even before it was still, Maze added: "Two coming fast from mark two," and they shifted about me to cover an opening on the opposite side.

It went on like that for way too long. The maze space is huge, and we weren’t just walking through it to a certain point, we were systematically searching out all of the chameleons and killing them.

The bright spot of the space was in the centre, the heart of the maze. It was an open, circular garden, with lots of grass between us and the walls, and beds of purple and red flowers which looked like cosmos. We’d been going about two hours by that time, and had cleared most of the chameleons. Maze ordered a break, though still to stick to using only our interfaces, and we sat down in the very centre, resting but on guard, Zee and Maze watching in opposite directions. Everyone was looking worn, and ate silently, so I decided not to bug them with questions and chewed on my entirely unappetising molasses bar. And then there was this cat.

Half-grown kitten, really, long-legged but not properly grown up. It was one of the slinky, big-eared type I’d seen on Muina, smoky grey with unexpectedly dark moss-green eyes. It was just there, sitting in front of me, drifting into visibility in an eye-blink. And, yeah, I was stupid, but my automatic reaction to cats, even ones which pop up out of nothing, is to hold out a hand, fingers unthreateningly down, and see if it runs away.

It acted just like a cat should, delicately sniffing, touching a cold nose to one knuckle, then rubbing its face against my hand. I had scratched it behind one ear and under its chin and felt the slightest buzz of a purr before it even occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t, and carefully took my hand back.

"Can I pick it up?" I asked over the interface.

First Squad’s reaction would probably have been comical if, well, if the Ena hadn’t been a life or death thing for them for so many years. Ketzaren was closest to me, sitting at a right-angle, and turned her head only to leap up as if scalded. And then they were all on their feet, the nanoliquid blades appearing, along with Mara’s Light-whip, and the cat very sensibly leaped away and vanished, leaving me sitting there staring up at them.

I remembered, at least, to keep talking over the interface. "Kittens are evil?"

None of them answered immediately, but Mara touched her hand to my shoulder and stared about, searching. "Nothing," she said.

"Checking the log," Maze said. When we’re on mission, as well as second level monitoring I’m on mission log, which he can access as team captain, so he meant he was looking at my recording of the cat. And then he looked at me a moment before scanning the area again. "Gone now, at any rate. Or completely undetectable." He looked back at me, and though his voice wasn’t angry his mouth was a flat line as he said: "If anything approaches us, no matter what it looks like, warn us immediately. We can’t judge by appearances here."

I felt a prize twit, of course, and could only nod and try really hard not to screw up any more on the mission. Which took another hour of tense maze-trekking and by the time we finally got back to KOTIS everyone looked like they had stress headaches.

"Another increase in population," Mara said, after the scan had cleared us of stickies. "I’m starting to reconsider the proposals to double-team."

"Dealing with swoops on top of that?" Lohn pulled a face. "I’ll pass."

"The trade-off is too great," Maze agreed, sounding terribly tired. He gave me a worn smile. "You made a big difference to that space’s difficulty. If it wasn’t for the population increase, we would have easily set a record completion pace."

"And you claim to disapprove of the pace records," Lohn said, heading to the showers.

"Lunch with me?" Zee said as we followed him, and I knew I was in for a talk well before we were sitting in a quiet corner of the canteen.

"Are kittens evil?" I asked, as soon as I’d swallowed enough of some yellowy mashed stuff (which tasted a lot better than it looked) to no longer feel painfully hungry.

"I’ve not read any reports featuring them," she said. "But there are Ionoth which can disguise their shape, and Ionoth with appearances entirely innocuous and intentions which are not. The problem with that one was that we did not detect it. There’s very few things that can get anywhere near as close as that to someone with Combat Sight without notice, threat or not." She reached over and rapped the back of my knuckles with her spoon. "And petting the thing was entirely idiotic." But she smiled at me, and shook her head to take the sting out of the words. "He was angry at himself, not you. Just be sure to be more sensible in future."

I nodded, still cringing internally. There was no way I was going to upset everyone like that again if I could help it. I watched her eat, not missing the shadows under her eyes, and finally managed to ask: "What happen third senior Setari squad?"

"A kadara." She said the word so softly I could barely hear her. "One which broke into real-space three years ago. We lost nine, most from the senior squads. They renumbered us all afterwards. The original First Squad captain, Helese, was Maze’s wife. He’s been very hard on himself ever since."

"Very sad guy," I said, and could only promise myself to not be entirely idiotic in future.

Wednesday, February 20

Third Squad

Third was a difficult squad to test with. Not because of any attitude, but because they had such a range of talents, which required three test environments to get through. I’d been a little nervous about working with their squad captain, Taarel – the spectacular one with the unlikely hair – just because I’d taken the impression she was really intense about Maze. But she was totally professional, so either it was my imagination or she’s not a petty sort.

But before Taarel there was Eeli. After breakfast I’d gone up to the roof because I’d figured it was around time for dawn, and on Tare dawn lasts a really long time and is well worth watching. I was sitting through a lesson on Taren geography, keeping an eye on the horizon, when a girl a year or maybe even two years younger than me arrived. Eeli Bata, according to the interface, looking like a string bean in her Setari uniform.

"Sorry to interrupt you," she started out, her voice high and enthusiastic. "I thought I’d introduce myself since we’re working with you today. I’m Eeli. I’m the path finder in Third Squad. I’ve really been looking forward to this. We all want to see how far you can take us."

This was definitely a different sort of Setari. "Hello."

"I can show you the way to the test room, when you’re ready," she continued. "Why are you up here on the roof? Are you not used to being inside buildings? Is this much like your world?"

Eeli is what Nenna would be if Nenna had uber psychic powers. She’d sometimes stop asking questions in the hopes I would remember them all to answer them, but then new questions would bubble up and she’d be off again. I wanted see if she would act like that once the training session started, and was pleased that, though she shut right up and did exactly what she should, she kept looking really excited the entire time.

We started in Test Room One to go through the combat talents. In terms of sheer fire power Third Squad is nothing compared to Eighth, but they’re not shabby either. We moved on to testing sights next. There’s six sorts of sights: Combat, Path, Gate, Symbol, Place and Sight Sight, which is two different words, but both mean sight. Third Squad has all but Sight Sight, which is really rare and is apparently something to do with divining the nature of things. According to Eeli, the bluesuit who came down in person to look at me, Selkie, has Sight Sight and so does Ruuel. Eeli is a great source of information. I don’t even have to ask her questions.

I could tell Taarel’s squad really adores their captain, the way First Squad respects Maze, but with an extra level of worship. She’s definitely one of those people like HM, a tiny sun, though she leaves HM in the shade. She has the strongest Ena manipulation talent, and when we went into the Ena to test my enhancement on her talents, she was able to partially close one of the gates. She has a calm reserve, but I can really picture her giving a Battle of Agincourt type of speech, inspiring everyone around her to follow and admire and commit great acts of nobility.

Reading back that last paragraph, it sounds like I have the hots for Taarel. Funny. I guess she impressed me. This whole entry is really confused and out of order and I think that’s because of Eeli’s gossip and because Taarel really reminds me of Ruuel. I haven’t had any reason to write about him, but I’ve developed a tendency to look closely at any squad I happen to see, hoping it might be Fourth. I think about him a lot more than I’ve written about.

And it occurred to me, while I was watching Taarel and being impressed and seeing Ruuel in the shape of her eyes, that I might be on second level monitoring for the rest of my life. No wonder none of the Setari want to have informal conversations with me.

Thursday, February 21

Let’s try that again – Third Squad

Yesterday’s entry reads as amazingly garbled. The shorter and less confused version is that Eeli collected me and we went to Test Room One. We tested combat skills and Combat Sight and then went to a smaller room where we tested Symbol and Place Sight. Then we went into the Ena and tested Path Sight, Gate Sight, and Ena manipulation. The fact that, enhanced, Taarel was able to partially close a small gate was a fairly major thing apparently. There’s a few gates in very inconvenient spots and, though it sounds like it would take a lot of sessions to do it, I had a strong impression that I’ll be assigned to Third Squad at some point in the future to go and close one or two that they really don’t want open.

Path Sight is a tracking ability: not seeing footprints, but knowing the direction of something. Gate Sight allows you to tell how long a gate will remain open. Place Sight is a very vague and all-encompassing sight that lets you see invisible things including things like auras, "the remnants of touch", whatever that means, or the way things used to look. Sometimes Place Sight will even show stickies. It’s considered a difficult Sight to cope with: painful, with bonus nightmares. Symbol Sight is a "specific interpretative" ability that reminds me of my injected language: see a word, and have an impression of meaning, while Sight Sight is a vaguer but more profound comprehension. They’re all called Sight, but it’s really more awareness. Combat Sight, for instance, means you’re aware of creatures around you, even if they’re behind walls, and gives you a strong advantage when trying to anticipate movement and attack. Both Third and Fourth Squad are Sight based exploration squads with duties focused around establishing new paths through the spaces to hot spots where Ionoth are infesting Tare’s near-space and real-space. But also trying to find and investigate the Ddura and the Pillars, and even to do investigative work for real-space crimes (psychic detectives!).

I suppose I must have some form of Path Sight, to have found my way to Earth’s near-space, although Eeli made it very clear that what I did was way outside their idea of the talent. Back when I first returned, and was in medical again, their attempts to test me for Path Sight were a complete failure, and I think they’re a little wary of pushing me too hard to do it in case I have another excursion.

There’s been no suggestion whatsoever that I try and train or focus my ability to jaunt off to Earth, no matter what Maze said about finding Pillars.

Castle Rotation

Today was my last scheduled rotation with First Squad, though I think that may be because they haven’t decided yet how to allocate me next week. Tomorrow I have nothing scheduled and to my delight Ketzaren said she was going into the city and asked if I want to tag along. Then I have a training day and a few more squads to be tested with (Fifth, Seventh, Tenth), but no more Ena rotations listed, just blank days every second day where they’re probably going to put missions once they’ve decided what they will be.

I feel strange about being a resource which is shared between dozens of people. There’s some teams I’m not looking forward to working with, but now that I’m not being kept in a box it sometimes feels like a positive way to live. I’m making their job a little easier, even if all I actively do is follow them about. I managed not to make an idiot out of myself this rotation, too, and First Squad were looking quite cheerful at the end of the day.

Lohn says that Castle is his favourite rotation. It was definitely different from the ones we’ve already done, and for the most part made me feel more than ever that I’ve strayed into some kind of computer game. It had NPCs! Maze explained beforehand that there would be two types of Ionoth in the Castle space, and that one we would be attacking while the other we would avoid. This would require me to move quickly whenever Ketzaren told me to, and there would probably be occasional levitating to different spots so I needed to be ready for that.

They didn’t warn me about the stairs though.

Castle Rotation is literally that – a castle. On a cliff-like rock. And we started at the bottom and worked our way to the top, chasing a mass of invading shadow people and cutting them down wherever possible. There were defending shadow people fighting against the invading shadow people and I see why Lohn likes it because it’s like you’re helping them. They even react sometimes as if they’re surprised to see the Setari and one looked like it was thanking Zee.

But, gods, we went up a lot of steps.

I think Ketzaren did a lot of extra unnecessary levitating, for which I will be eternally grateful. I really don’t know if I can get as fit as everyone else, and talked to Mara about it afterwards, especially about the way I keep falling asleep after the testing sessions instead of doing the jogging I was supposed to. She pointed out that I’d been hospitalised twice the previous month, and that walking up all these stairs probably counted for more than the jogging anyway. The interface lets them monitor my heartbeat all the time, and they’re really more interested in keeping me alive than trying to make me into a watered-down version of a Setari.

Not that this let me out of dodging practice the day after tomorrow. Mara says she’s planning to make sure I at least have a chance to survive if a bunch of children try and beat me up. I gather she thinks I’m pretty hopeless so far.

Saturday, February 22

Can I keep it?

I’d made a list of things to look for during my trip to the city, like throw rugs for the lounges, and some snacks to keep in my apartment. Although I’d realised I could purchase most things through my interface and have them delivered, it was more the idea of going out and looking around which had me excited. Besides, I wanted a haircut, and Ketzaren hadn’t seemed at all bothered about the time involved in taking me to a hairdressers, even though it meant she would have to sit around waiting for me. She has long, shiny black hair which is super-straight and neat and makes my current collection of split ends look even worse by comparison.

It was also nice to have a reason to wear something other than my uniform, and to see Ketzaren in a pretty dress. I often wonder if First Squad does much socialising outside of KOTIS. Do people not in the military seem annoying or refreshing? How do they get the chance to meet them? Are there rules about whether you can date someone in your own squad? I guess it must be okay to get married, since Maze was.

I was toying with the idea of seeing how many of these mysteries I could unravel while spending a day just with Ketzaren, but when we met up she was with Jeh from Second Squad, so I shelved the idea for the moment. Jeh is so comfortable and relaxed that I didn’t mind her coming too, though having to be escorted about does mean that shopping is always going to feel like wasting someone else’s time to me. We were just at the big doors which mark one of the exits out of KOTIS, and are one of the few places which are actively guarded by greensuits, when an alarm (bip-bip-bip) sounded. Actual noise, not just in the interface, which is really rare here. The emergency space of the interface abruptly filled with Lockdown and Incursion 1 messages. And the doors to outside began to close.

I’d really love to know what would have happened if I’d been up on the roof when the lockdown started, but I’m hoping no-one else thinks of that because then they’d probably tell me not to go out there all the time. As it was, Ketzaren and Jeh both froze and looked really surprised for a second, then went very alert.

"In here," Ketzaren said, pointing to a waiting room area just to one side of the entrance. She and Jeh had flanked me, looking all dangerous and prepared despite the nice dresses. Jeh touched me on the shoulder as we moved, and said: "Nothing in my range," when we stopped in the centre of the room. They stayed on either side of me, scanning for movement.

"Is Ionoth in KOTIS?"

"Not confirmed yet," Jeh said, but then the message change to Incursion 2. "Confirmed now."

Then there was an exceedingly tedious period where Ketzaren and Jeh stood guarding me and obviously talking to people over the interface. I didn’t like to ask any more questions when they were tensed for attack, and after a while I gave up and started playing around with interface settings. I still hadn’t decided on the decoration for my rooms, and had found a vast array of images I could purchase to use, and yet couldn’t settle on any of them.

Ketzaren made a sound, so I stopped playing with the interface and looked at her only to find her looking back at me with a strange expression.

"They found the incursion," she said. "That Ionoth cat from the Maze Rotation must have followed–"

She broke off. I guess I must have done some sort of major colour change. I certainly felt sick right through: lightning nausea. "It hurt someone?"

"No." She gave me a quizzical frown. "Don’t jump to conclusions. Here, have a chair." She steered me into the nearest and shook her head at me.

"Probably simplest to show her rather than explain," Jeh said. "I’ll route it."

Perhaps the oddest thing ever about living on Tare is that when you watch what people have recorded with their own eyes and ears, you not only have it filtered by factors like bad hearing or red-green colour blindness, but you also see it through the frame of their face. Just as how you can see the edges of your nose but usually tune it out. Whoever had made the recording Jeh sent me blinked a lot, had a long fringe, and wore a stud in their nose.

The recording started out with the Ionoth cat, sitting on top of a high cabinet in a huge and busy industrial kitchen, staring down at something below it. It was all coiled and intent, tail twitching, and the person who was recording called out to the other people in the kitchen, drawing attention to it. The cat didn’t seem to care, staring down at this guy standing just beneath it. Some girl made a joke and the guy looked up and looked confused, and stepped away. The cat’s tail twitched even faster and then it leapt at him, making a lot of people shout and shriek, and it would have landed right on his chest, except it went right through him. And he gasped and shuddered and sat down in a heap and there was the cat on the floor on the other side of him, with something in its mouth that looked like a big silverfish with octopus tendencies. The cat shook the thing briskly, then held it down with a paw and bit it in a particularly final way, crunch. Then it picked the body up, jumped up to the nearby counter and on top of another cabinet, and vanished.

"Is stickie?" I asked, still feeling sick about the whole thing. The Ionoth cat had followed me home because I’d petted it. If it had attacked the cook instead of the bug-octopus, then it would have been my fault.

"A new type." Ketzaren sat down with a sigh, apparently deciding we weren’t in immediate danger of attack. "One that’s beyond the current scans, which is a huge problem. It’s too much to hope that that’s the only one. It’s far more likely that there’s a more developed originator, and that we’re looking at a minor or even major plague of the things. And that could get extremely nasty. Stickies don’t kill you quickly, but they’re fatal left unchecked, even if the host doesn’t have a psychotic break. And if we can’t detect them, we can’t even tell how far they’ve spread."

"What happen now?"

"We stay in lockdown. They’ll start with the kitchens and try every kind of scan available to see if they can detect any Ionoth. If that fails, they’ll randomly treat some unlucky volunteers with unpleasantly painful sonics and see if anything falls out. And if it does–" She wrinkled her nose. "More attempts to find some way to detect them. And if they don’t, a very high chance they’ll treat everyone in KOTIS with sonics, and issue a general health alert so civilians have the option of being treated, which most of them won’t because it’s unpleasant. And then people will start to sicken and die and the majority will get treated but a few won’t and there’ll be an endless cycle of infection and outbreak hotspots."

I stared at her. I think she meant it.

"Lohn was right," Jeh said, placidly

Ketzaren lifted her eyebrows and said: "Only rarely. What this time?"

"He said Caszandra is lucky. Which she is, to have survived Muina. To have been rescued. To have put Ruuel in the right place to find that Pillar. And now for meeting a cat which eats stickies." She smiled at me, but then added: "Not that you should ever go petting any other Ionoth which come walking up to you. That truly was–"

"Dumb." I sighed. I can tell I’m never going to live that down.

We stayed in the waiting room for three hours. Ketzaren and Jeh told me about the last major stickie outbreak, which happened nearly fifty Tare-years ago, and then a few stories about stupid things they’d done early in their training. Jeh had been really good at falling off things whenever she went into the Ena and Ketzaren had once walked through the gate next to the one everyone else went through.

When they finally figured out a way to scan for the new type of stickie, we had to report to be scanned and I was really glad to learn there was no octopus-silverfish living in my chest. But they’ve found something like five hundred infected people so far, and have extended the scans to the rest of the island and they’ll be part of elevator security on all of Tare in the future.

But they haven’t found the cat yet. And I’m glad.

Saturday, February 23

Bring out the whips

Mara took my training seriously today. Dodging right after breakfast (ow), and then we went jogging slowly around a running track which had an obstacle course in the middle which a bunch of kids were scrambling their way through in a terrifically professional kind of way. Setari of the future.

The whole squad met up for lunch, and talked about the progress of the stickie cleansing. KOTIS have found what they think was the original infection point – a food supply place out in the city – and the number of cases has risen to thousands. KOTIS only had a secondary infection hub. I’d already seen some of this on the news, but the real numbers involved aren’t publicly announced, and all of First Squad were looking relieved and worried both. From their point of view this is just another sign of the increasing strength of the Ionoth, in numbers or in ability, and no-one understands what’s changed which has made the problem increase so much these past few years.

I feel more a part of the team rather than a guest now, settling in to that caddie-type role I was thinking of earlier. But my assignment to First Squad isn’t going to last, which sucks. I’ve got testing with Seventh Squad tomorrow. Their Captain was the one pretending to be nice to Zan at the pool, the one who called me it, so I’m not looking forward to having anything to do with them. I’m really not sure what I’ll do working with squads who have people I’m not comfortable with or who make me feel bad. Especially if we go out on rotation in the Ena. What I said to Lohn and Mara is close to how I feel: going out there is scary, but I’m not panicked by it because I trust First Squad. I wonder if I’ll ever be given any choice about who I work with?

After lunch, all First Squad did swimming training with me. Maze says we might do some of the flooded rotations, and so we swam in our full uniforms with the breathers, and had little races through the underwater obstacles. Underwater battles have whole new levels of complications: talents like Fire and Wind are useless. Telekinesis is still viable, but you handle it differently, since picking up a rock and throwing it has an entirely different effect underwater. Lohn and Mara’s Light powers still work pretty much the same, and there is apparently a water manipulation talent, though no-one on First Squad has it. But most water environments are close-combat, except harder.

I was so tired afterwards. I keep having afternoon naps, and then waking up in the evening. Hopefully when I’m fitter I’ll be able to handle all this better.

Sunday, February 24

Seventh Squad

I shouldn’t have been surprised that the Seventh Squad captain, Atara Forel, was totally professional. Back when she was being nasty-sweet to Zan I’d already seen that she was the type whose attacks aren’t open, and she definitely wasn’t the sort to show herself in a bad light during an official testing session which was being recorded. So when I reached the testing room, all she did was nod at me and say: "Good, we can get started now. Same routine as Kanato’s squad. We’ll start with you, Mema."

Seventh is another of the big-hitter squads, and just like Eighth, were caught up in the sheer excitement of being enhanced to super-destructive levels. It’s spectacular to watch the big-hitter tests, but at the same time kind of dull, so I spent my time studying them instead.

Forel is like a cat: lithe and slinky, with a pointed chin and big eyes. I can just picture her purring and digging in the claws. Her primary talent is Lightning, and she saved her testing for last. It was important to her, I think, that her overall result was higher than Hasen’s from Eighth. When she’s pleased her eyes go all slitted.

The other guy who was with her at the pool is Pol Tsennen, primarily an Ena manipulation talent, with a secondary in Fire. He seems mainly interested in watching Forel. Then there’s the smug twins, Mema and Residen. I don’t think they’re really twins – they don’t look precisely alike, and they have different surnames – but their hair is cut the same way and they seem to use the same mannerisms and they’re very pleased with themselves and keep exchanging looks. They had a swag of talents, with a primary of Ice for Mema and a variation of Light manipulation for Residen.

Dahlen is their Sight talent, with both Gate and Path Sight, along with Telekinesis. She’s tall and strong-looking and I don’t know if it’s just because of her height, but I kept thinking of her as a tree. Cats might sharpen their claws on trees, but they’ve got plenty of bark, and don’t really care.

The last squad member, Saitel Raph, was the only one who caught me watching them. Him I couldn’t make out at all, other than an impression that he’s smart. He’s also the only one who spoke to me outside Forel’s strictly correct instructions, and then just to say "Thank you," before heading off.

Is it really the second level monitoring that makes the younger squads so disinclined to interact with me? Or do they think of me as human machinery, there to perform a task? With the notable exception of Eeli, the younger Setari never seem to consider the possibility of just chatting with me.

Or – just occurred to me – they’re all competitive with each other, and there’s an advantage in having me assigned to them. Maybe they’re all determined not to be seen pursuing me, so to speak. But…no. No-one’s ever acted like any of my assignments will be my decision.

Speaking of which, when I woke up from my inevitable after-testing nap, I had another bunch of rotations assigned. All with First Squad, so I have something to be happy about.

Monday, February 25

Bridges Rotation

I spotted Zan again, having dinner when I went for breakfast, and wasn’t slow to ask to join her. She had circles under her eyes, but almost sort of smiled at me as I sat down. I asked if she could recommend any novels to read, and tried to explain fantasy to her. I don’t want to read stories about Setari – I was getting more than enough of them in real life and from television – but hadn’t succeeded in finding any good stories which were based on mythology rather than reality, so to speak. We had a really interesting conversation about the origin of myths and the kind of stories people tell when they know what’s "out there" compared to when they don’t. I almost forgot to meet up with First Squad for the day’s mission, and had to dash off, but she emailed me a list of books to try.

Bridges Rotation is only one space, although we had to walk through an awful lot of Tare’s near-space to get to its gate. Near-space is usually fairly clear, because the Setari spend such a lot of effort killing off everything in the surrounding spaces, but we’ve a couple of times encountered things on the way to the gates and today there was this swarm of razor-tipped rabbits (O.o) which First Squad chased down and killed on the way.

The Bridges space itself was very strange. The bridges are all made of bone; the starkly curving ribs of giants. But the space is twisted, distorted, and perspective plays tricks with up and down and where things end and begin. A space designed by Escher, which I should have appreciated, but it made me dizzy, so I eventually had to concentrate just on the section of bridge in front of me.

There were three types of Ionoth there. Quite large ones, about the size of a car, that had attached themselves to the underneath of the bridges and were very similar in colour. I suppose the idea is that they wait until something walks above them and then they close these massive filigree claw-things over the top. An odd kind of Venus fly-trap. Combat Sight made these immensely easy. Maze or Zee would spot them well ahead, and then Maze just pried them loose with Telekinesis and held them up so Lohn could shoot them with unenhanced Light beams.

The rest of the time we chased about after long-legged, metallic storks with curving, sword-like beaks. They would run if they met us alone, collect in groups, and then try and rush us. The walls of light and columns of fire came in handy for them.

And there were two dog-things, rather like afghan hounds, but with possum-type claws to grip the bridges as they raced along. They trailed a pearly rainbow light, and looked strange and dangerous. Since they were a new type, First Squad paused to observe and document them, waiting to see how they would react when they sighted us.

They stopped, and sat down, heads angled toward each other as if they were talking. First Squad waited, and made no move to prevent them when the dogs loped off through one of the gates.

I was glad First Squad doesn’t indiscriminately slaughter everything they encounter, but curious as well, and asked Zee about it over dinner. I’ve learned not to ask too many questions while in the spaces. First Squad will usually answer me, but I think they’d rather keep their attention on scanning for attacks.

"Fortunately, the Castle Rotation was one of the first spaces we encountered," Zee told me. "It’s an obvious lesson: some of the Ionoth can act as our allies, if only by lowering the number of our opponents. Combat Sight allows us to judge intention to a degree, and those two today sparked no reaction. Wary, but no more. If they attack unprovoked, they’ll be put on the kill on sight list, but not until then. In some of the spaces, if we tried to kill everything there, it would take us a week, and it only makes sense to focus on Ionoth which pose a tangible danger. Still, don’t–"

"–pat cats," I finished resignedly. "Has been seen again?"

"Not yet. Hardly an ideal situation, having an Ionoth loose in KOTIS, no matter how useful. It is pushing us to develop newer and better scans. If you see it at all, contact one of us immediately."

I nodded, though I can’t say I’d particularly want to help get it captured. Tomorrow is Fifth Squad testing, worse luck. Not looking forward to it.

Tuesday, February 26

Fifth Squad

Fifth Squad are fuckwits.

Their captain is that Kajal guy with the voice, who was making an ass of himself to Zan. I was lucky, I think, that I’d had that warning about what he was like: smugly pleased with himself and the type who is really interested in proving himself better than everyone else, even for small things. I don’t know if his squad started out as unlikeable as he is, but he seems to have infected them pretty thoroughly. It’s a five guy, one girl team, but I can’t say that the girl, Elwes, is any nicer than the rest of them.

They’re a generalist squad, so we met in Test Room One to start with. They were all standing in the middle in a circle, and didn’t glance at me as I came up. Kajal’s a big guy, maybe 6’4", and the rest of his team are pretty close to as tall. Even though I’d learned from Seventh Squad that I shouldn’t have to worry about official on-the-record test sessions, I still felt a bit nervous. And then annoyed, because even though there wasn’t a chance they didn’t know I was there, Kajal left me standing at his elbow while he finished telling his squad something not particularly interesting-sounding about their next day’s rotation.

"Right then," he said, at last. "Let’s get started. Nise, you’re first up."

They moved away, only one of the guys staying near me (he had great hair: spiky with dark blue tips). He waited till Kajal nodded at him, then grabbed my shoulder for a moment and began testing a Telekinesis talent. It went on like that for all of them. None of them spoke to me or nodded to me or anything like that. Every one of them gripped my shoulder in the exact same way – not roughly or hard or anything, but enough for me to feel it through the uniform’s padding. All the other squads, since the first day with First Squad, have barely touched me, usually brushing the back of a hand against my arm. It couldn’t be coincidence that every single one of Fifth Squad approached enhancement so differently, though it’s really hard to imagine them sitting around deciding this would be a worthwhile exercise.

Then we went into the Ena to test Ena-specific talents. Since Kajal continued to address all his remarks generally, so they could be interpreted to include me, I followed along behind, wondering if what he was trying to do was get me to kick up a fuss or act upset or what. We always do Ena tests in the grassy space First Squad took me to, which is both easy to get to and seemingly permanently clear of Ionoth. There was nothing different about what Fifth Squad did for their testing there, except they walked in front of me on the way, striding along at a pace I didn’t expect, so that I trailed them by a few feet.

That was a mistake, I think. Sure, there was pretty much no chance anything was going to attack me, but it looked like they were being lax and had forgotten they were supposed to be protecting me. I hope they get demerits. And when we were back in real-space, they just walked off without another word.

I took myself off to medical, and tried to figure out why Fifth had bothered. To intimidate or upset me, yeah, but why? What does it gain to make me feel uncomfortable? It did work. I spent most of the time feeling embarrassed and angry. They acted like my enhancement was something bad, a thing causing them inconvenience. Like they were barely tolerating that they had to work with me.

Perhaps they expect me to complain? For a lot of the time I felt like it, but I don’t even see the point. I don’t feel safe working with them in the Ena, but I’m unlikely to be assigned to another generalist squad if they do change who I work with. I figure I’ll either be kept with First Squad or swapped between the big hitters and the Sight specialists as the need arises. I don’t know. I want to bitch and complain about it, but there’s no-one I can do that with. Everyone on First Squad would have to deal with it officially if I whined about it, and so would Zan if I laid it on her.

I guess, if I brood on it too much, they’ll have won. So I’ll try to forget all about it, and not worry unless they show up on my schedule again.

It’s occurred to me that, in gaming terms, I’m an escort quest. So funny. And Fifth Squad are hardcore pvp-ers who think quests are a waste of time. Tools.

Wednesday, February 27

Cancelled

Today was supposed to be Boxes Rotation, but when I woke up this morning I had no appointments for the rest of the week. I’ve gone all paranoid that this means they’ve decided to assign me away from First Squad.

I guess this is an opportunity to catch up on all the school work I’ve been ignoring, which I will get to right after I’m done with some important worrying and sulking.

March

Sunday, March 2

Aether

Aether is an Earth word, I’m sure of it. Or, at least, ether is, and I know that’s an anaesthetic, but there’s another definition. I’ve read it in fantasy novels, used for the atmosphere in one of the afterlifes or something. There’s a phrase, off in the aether isn’t there? Aether is a word on Tare, as well. I found that out…it’s four days ago now, I think. The day which was supposed to be Boxes Rotation.

I spent the morning on the roof doing homework and enjoying the sunshine. It was a rare cloudless day, really nice. After lunch I lolled about on my bed, watching news and sampling dramas and trying to read the descriptions of online games I’m considering subscribing to because no-one would treat me as a stray in a game – just a noob. But they all look a bit daunting because it’s played inside your head and though they’re not in-skin, they’ll still be vastly more than I’m used to. The things you might do in a full virtual reality are more than I’m willing to take on just yet.

I was labouring through the description of one when an appointment was entered into my calendar, and I had just looked to see that I was supposed to be doing a Retrieval starting five minutes ago when Zan "opened a channel" to me, which is Tare-speak for calling me, except that when someone opens a channel you don’t get any choice about answering your equivalent of a phone – their voice is just abruptly there in your head. Only people with a certain amount of authority can do that, generally for emergencies. This was a big one.

"Cassandra, come as quickly as you can to Green Lock," she said. "Ready for entry into the Ena."

I was glad I wasn’t still on the roof. "Something happen?" I asked as I quickly stripped off the clothes I’d been slopping around in.

"The Pillar investigation teams have gone down," Zan said, which was enough to make me run along the corridors, after I’d made a lightning-quick bathroom stop and had my uniform sprayed on. I was too scared to ask what exactly gone down meant, just hoped retrieval meant something more positive than bringing back bodies. First Squad are pretty much making this planet bearable for me, and the idea of anything happening to them made me sick.

I wasn’t the last to arrive. Both Twelfth Squad and Tenth Squad were gathering, more than a few of them looking mussed and sleepy since they were on an earlier shift than mine and would have been in bed when the call came. The only person I’d worked with before was Zan, and the implications of that kept my mouth shut altogether as they waited for the last stragglers to arrive. To use two squads who had just come off-shift, and to put me with them when they’re not squads I’d tested with, was more than enough to underline how bad it was. I didn’t even need to see the worried glances they kept exchanging.

This was the first time I’d seen any of the Setari really fretting. The Tenth Squad captain is a guy named Els Haral, who looks incredibly laid-back and speaks with a soft voice. He was having a really good calming effect on everyone else, but the situation wasn’t one you could tamp down on thoroughly. And there was one guy there from Sixth Squad called Juna Quane, who had brought the news back and was barely able to stand the delay while everyone assembled. Haral created a shared space for both squads, Quane and me, and began briefing everyone as the last few were heading toward us – one of the advantages of the interface.

"Following our regained access to the Pillar space at the beginning of Shift Two," he said, "all but one of the monitoring drones were recovered intact. These revealed an unvarying energy signature from the Pillar, but no other activity. The space itself is exposed to deep-space and heavily frequented by roamer Ionoth: primarily swoop-type, and some larger. Third and Fourth Squads were deployed to perform an external examination and, if satisfied, to commence investigating the interior. Given the calibre of Ionoth, First, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth were assigned as support.

"Sixth Squad was stationed in the adjoining entry space to observe, and the primary teams entered without incident and commenced the external examination. Here is the schematic of the Pillar prepared following external scanning and observation. We’ll move into the near-space now."

We broke neatly into our two squads and Tenth Squad went through the gate-lock first. Zan had kept her call to me open and said: "Stay on my left as we travel, and tell me on this channel if you can’t keep pace, or feel any threat."

There wasn’t much I could say to this except "Yes," and I looked over the schematic during the brief pause while we waited to go through.

The Pillar was a lot bigger than I’d realised. With nothing around it except white or washes of rainbow colours, I’d judged its height by the door. If the schematic was correct, then the door was nearly three times as tall as normal doors. The Pillar seemed to have a hollow inner tube running all the way from top to bottom which was marked power core. The gap between the inner and outer wall didn’t seem to have any stairs or levels or more than possibly some structures on the ground floor. Built, if anything, like a giant thermos.

Once we were all in near-space, Haral and Zan both gave the order for a quick march in formation. The squads each settled into three pairs and we started off, with me settling beside Zan and Lenton, while Quane played offsider with Tenth Squad.

"During the external examination," Haral continued, "three groups of swoop-types and one tarani attacked. These were well within projections, and easily dealt with. A little over one zelkasse ago, the decision was made to open the Pillar."

A kasse is about two and a half Earth-hours long, and a zelkasse is a quarter that, so it had started less than an hour before Zan collected me.

"There was no apparent locking mechanism, and the doors were opened easily using a drone. When no negative reaction was detected, Third and Fourth engaged in another set of scans preparatory to entering. They had not yet completed when this happened."

We’d reached the first gate out of near-space, and though all these spaces would have been recently cleared, Haral and his partner did exactly the same pause, scan and clear through that had become familiar, but he gave us all a fragment of recorded memory to digest first. It had a mission display overlay and had "Quane" written in the lower left and a little life monitor for the rest of the squad along the right side, which of course made me think of gaming in a far from positive way. No infinite lives or save games here.

The first image was of the Pillar space through the gate from the Platforms space. Quane had looked left, where there was only white flatness with a rainbow-tinted backdrop, and a handful of Setari. Then he’d looked right, back past more Setari to the tower in the distance. It was a lot further than I’d thought, maybe a hundred metres away. The doors were open, and Third and Fourth Squads were standing well back from them, playing with a drone.

I saw Ruuel just before he moved. He turned his head sharply and I think he shouted, but it was too late.

White light. A massive beam of it, roaring out of the open doorway, spreading to completely block sight of the Pillar and the Setari. For about ten seconds nothing could be seen and Sixth Squad bit back startled comments. Then the whiteness began to lift, or drain down, quickly clearing at the top. The hazy outline of the Pillar came visible first, and then black shapes, lying in a settling mist.

"Kormin sent Ammas in, and confirmed aether effects," Haral went on, while we were still watching the end of this. "He was able to reach Tsennan with talent and return, bringing him out, but even that brief exposure left him debilitated. Tsennan’s vitals were steady, but he showed no immediate sign of recovery. At that point Kormin sent Quane with the emergency call."

We reached the next gate, and after we were all through Haral switched to handing out orders.

"On reaching the Pillar space, Kantan will enhance and create a vortex, drawing up as much of the aether as possible. Then the Telekinesis talents will enhance and bring out as many of the fallen squads as can be reached. Our major challenge will be successfully reaching the most distant squads while suffering the effects of aether. And Ionoth."

That was a big and. I wasn’t sure what swoops were, but it was obvious that they’d deployed a lot of squads to ward them off. At about this point I was starting to really have to work at not slowing down, and was glad the space before the Platforms space was this short remnant of a flagstone road, all tumbled and broken and not the sort of thing you can jog straight across. And then we were in the Platforms space, and Sixth Squad weren’t waiting for us.

"Twelfth, stay with me," Zan said curtly, as Tenth and Quane doubled their speed and dashed up the criss-crossing white squares. She increased her pace, and lifted me easily with Telekinesis. Then Tenth reached the top and someone cursed, my interface only telling me "(Profanity) (profanity)."

"Mane, that’s in your normal range," Haral said, unflurried, but with just a hint of tightness in his voice. "Ignore the swoops and pull them back here."

One of the girls from Tenth Squad stepped through the gate. Another turned to a trio of blacksuited figures lying unmoving on the platform just above the one next to the gate. Zan, jogging up, glanced through the gate as she returned me to my feet, and said: "Ice seems safest."

Haral nodded, eyes narrowed as he watched over Mane’s shoulder. I could see what seemed like a pair of pearly pterodactyls, but less awkward-looking. Swoops.

"Lenton, enhance and stop them before they follow," Zan said, adding a hand gesture to tell her squad to spread across the nearest three platforms. Me she had stand just to the right of the gate entrance.

Lenton, who seemed to have left his temper behind today, brushed a hand against my shoulder and stepped through immediately, slipping past Mane as she returned. She had three limp Setari hovering behind her, and everyone moved back so she could bring them through, Haral catching her by the shoulder as she looked likely to fall over herself.

The nanosuits are good protection, really resistant to piercing and cutting, and automatically self-repairing, but they’re not invulnerable. And they left the faces bare. Of the three Setari Mane brought back, two had gaping rents down their fronts, slick and wet, and the third looked like something with a wide, small-toothed mouth had tried to bite off his head, and not quite succeeded. I recognised Dahlen from Seventh, but not the other two.

"Kantan, enhance and start," Haral said.

Kantan was a tall, fairly dark guy. He touched me on my back, stepped around the cluster of people trying to do something about the injured, and walked resolutely out into the knee-high mist. Lenton had made two massive balls of ice with swoops in the centre, which fell to the ground and stayed still. He paused a moment, looking around, then stepped back through, staggering as he came but managing to stay upright. He was sweating, but said steadily enough: "Another cluster of swoops to the left, approaching fast, and what looks like a stilt in the far distance behind the Pillar."

"Darm, enhance and take care of the swoops," Haral said. "And tell Kantan to come back in before he collapses. Namara, will you go after?"

Zan nodded as a curvy Setari went through the gate and turned left. Kantan was a Wind talent – I could see the stirring agitation he was causing in the mist thickly covering the ground. Like Ketzaren he needed time to set up anything really strong, but managed to start up a twisting spiral, sucking the mist toward it, before he returned obediently and stood shuddering and shaking his head. "That will draw for a while," he said, as Zan touched my arm. "But more was flowing from the Pillar."

"Rest," Haral said, watching Zan step through. "You may be able to strengthen it later, and it’s at least pulling some of it away from this gate. Drysen, prepare to enhance. Status on injuries?"

"Dahlen and Roth will keep," said Nels, the Setari who had been doing most of the medicking. She’d somehow made most of the wounded’s uniforms move aside, and was busy spraying what I guess was liquid bandages everywhere. "Ammas is critical and getting worse."

"Quane, Sherun, get him back to base," Haral said. "Drysen, go through. Tens, Charn, get ready to take some of these."

The difficulty was not the weight of the Setari, but distance and numbers. I’d already learned from testing that picking up multiple small objects is harder than one big one. Zan, the strongest of the telekinetics, had gathered eight fallen at once, and started feeding them quickly through the gate into the waiting arms of the two Haral had ordered forward. Others stepped up to ferry them further away from the crowded entrance, and then Zan came through, stumbling. "Darm’s down," she said, voice slurred. "Drysen’s fetching her. One swoop of that cluster still coming, no more in sight."

"Kiste, take care of it and come straight back in," Haral said. "Mane, how’s recovery?"

Mane, the first of the telekinetics who had gone through, was sitting two platforms up, looking green, but she stood up when he spoke and came back down to the gate. "Doesn’t wear off quickly," she said, grimly.

"We’ll pause when Kiste’s back in," Haral said, surveying the still forms around him. They’d managed to get less than half out so far. Drysen, when he returned, had Darm and three others. One of them was Zee, which made my heart give a little joyous skip, but the toll on the two rescue squads was obvious. They’d brought in every Setari who was close, but almost all of First, Third and Fourth Squad were still out there.

And all that time I’d been staring at the glowing mist and remembering moonfall on Muina. Liquid light. But moonfall hadn’t hurt me, as it was so obviously hurting the Setari.

"What aether?" I asked Zan through our shared channel, since she was sitting down with her eyes closed and was probably the least busy that I’d get her.

"A form of energy," Zan replied, opening her eyes, but keeping her answer in the channel. "We encounter it occasionally in the spaces, though I’ve not seen any reports of such concentrated amounts outside the major interplanetary gates which cut through deep-space. It’s very common around them, and we need to use vehicles to survive passing those gates."

"It do what you?"

"Initially pain, like being burned or frozen at the bones. Interference with control of movement and talents, then loss of consciousness, increasing paralysis. Death within a kasse, if you remain in it." She closed her eyes again, but added: "We’ll reach them yet."

"Is other sorts aether?"

She gave me a puzzled look, but then Kiste came back into view and fell through the gate, landing on his hands and knees. "That stilt’s heading this way," he said, panting. "Circling, but definitely coming for here, and not slowly."

Haral was looking grimmer by the second, but his voice was still relaxed and calm as he said: "Kantan, enhance again and do what you can. Mane, be ready to follow. Signal if the stilt’s in my projected enhanced range." He went on as Kantan touched my shoulder. "Given the effect of the aether, we can’t take a stilt lightly, no matter how enhanced. We’ll try an initial group of myself, Lenton and Tens. If everything we can do doesn’t bring it down–" He paused, and I suspect he’d realised he’d run out of conscious heavy-hitters. "If we can’t bring it down, Kiste, make whatever attempt you can while Namara and Drysen pull everyone they can reach to the gate."

Mane followed Kantan through before Haral finished speaking and Haral waited a few seconds then touched my arm, watching without change of expression as Kantan collapsed at Mane’s feet. He’d managed to strengthen the wind vortex, but the glowing mist didn’t seem to be getting much thinner. Lenton waited the bare minimum of my prescribed delay before enhancing himself as well, while Tens stepped up to help Mane, who was struggling not to fall while bringing Kantan and another – it was Alay – through the gate.

"Stilt will be closing in a count of twenty," Mane said, folding into a panting tangle almost on top of Alay. "Gainer was the only one left in my range."

Tens touched my shoulder, and exchanged a glance with Haral. I think they were trying to accept not succeeding in getting everyone out.

I never saw the stilt myself. Only later, in extracts of the mission report which Zee showed me. Black, nearly as tall as the tower, with a long, sloping body and spindly legs like vine tendrils. The underside of it was all covered in more tendrils, long ones and short ones, and I think that’s where its mouth was, because its head was just this sort of triangle with eyes. Haral, Lenton and Tens concentrated their attacks on its underside, anyway, with Ice and then two balls of lightning. The first was a little low, but the second was placed nicely, shattering frozen tentacles in a spectacular orgy of blasts. One of its legs was blown apart, and it fell.

Lenton passed out, and Haral and Tens carried him back between them, staying upright themselves but moving very slowly. "Go," Zan said to Drysen, who touched me and headed out, face bleak. I saw the same expression on Zan’s face as she waited her turn. Everyone who’d gone in a second time had collapsed. With the continuing Ionoth attacks, it was no wonder all of Sixth Squad had ended up unconscious. The few Setari remaining had no chance of getting the other squads out. When Drysen didn’t even manage to bring back one more person before going down, Zan lifted her hand toward my shoulder. And I caught and held her still, just long enough to take advantage of her surprise and step through the gate myself.

I’d almost convinced myself that it would hurt. Genetically, I’m the same as these people, and every one of them had flinched a little walking into the mist and then acted like it was slowly crushing them. But it was just the same as Muina’s: chilly but bringing a pleasant warmth, a feeling of wellbeing. The wind from the vortex made it swirl around me ominously, but I felt fine.

Drysen wasn’t a little guy. There was no way I could carry him through the gate, but I could drag him closer and lift him partway so that Zan and the one called Nels could haul him the rest of the way through. I paused before following, taking a good look about, but could see no sign of more Ionoth for the moment. I was wondering if not trying to go through before was a big screw-up on my part, but it’s not as if I would have been able to fight off the Ionoth. Besides, I would have had to waste time arguing with everyone, and the picture I was presenting was definitely worth a thousand words.

"Try close door, best thing?" I asked, after stepping back through.

"That doesn’t effect you?" Haral sounded totally nonplussed.

"Is – moonlight feel is alcohol. Light-headed, bit dizzy." I shrugged. "Not hurt, such. Is close door help?"

Zan and Haral exchanged a long glance, then Zan said: "I don’t see any other positive options," and Haral pulled a face and nodded.

"Run," Zan said to me.

That I didn’t need encouragement to do. If any more Ionoth came along, I’d be the one with my face scraped off. And I hadn’t properly worked out just how much time was left before people would start dying from exposure to the aether.

I don’t recommend taking on Serious Business while tanked. It’s not so much that I was incapable of running (well, jogging) a hundred metres, even though I became ever more pixillated with each step. I saw Mara as I ran past and became madly convinced I was going to let her down, and I really didn’t want to. It was a damn good thing that I wasn’t out to do anything more complicated than close some doors. And I remember this whole obsession growing up about the size of the doors and that I wouldn’t be able to move them when I got there, but then I was there. I actually collided with the right door, which was one way to learn that they moved really easily. I pushed it shut, suddenly feeling good again, and started for the other half, and that’s when my head shut down altogether.

As I was waking up, I was thinking that since I was waking up I must have shut the other half of the door. Then I was noticing a fuzzy fence which seemed to be holding the fact that I felt very very bad at a bearable distance. And a weirdness about my face, which made me lift a hand, and I found that one of my eyes was covered up. There was something else which was even weirder, but I couldn’t immediately figure out what it was, so I turned my head and saw that Maze was on a chair beside me, but asleep, slumped against the wall.

I heard someone shift on my other side, and that was harder to look at because of my covered eye. Without understanding why, I didn’t want to move my hand, and kept it over the bandage, but eventually I managed to shift round enough to see Zan, who I think must have moved so I could see her. She plainly needed to sleep a lot too, but mostly she looked incredibly relieved and happy-upset.

I wanted to say something about she should smile more often, but that’s when I realised what was really weird. No interface. Not at all. Trying to talk and not having suggestions for words coming in my mind really threw me. I couldn’t even remember really common words which I’d actually learned, my brain was so mushy. So I just tried to smile back at her, and said: "Stupid language," in English in a really croaky voice, and most sensibly passed out.

Next time I opened my eyes, Zee was there instead, and I was a little more capable of stringing two thoughts together. And seemed to be in less pain, but also on fewer painkillers, so I felt it more. I was pleased that I could remember a few words of Taren this time, and managed: "No interface?" but my throat really didn’t like me talking, and my chest felt all congested and my mouth tasted foul, so I coughed until Zee fetched a greysuit who helped me spit out black stuff and drink some water – from which I figured that the Setari again have orders not to touch me.

I hate being in the medical section, especially anything which involves drips and catheters and tubes. Tare’s technology seems to be pretty similar to Earth’s in respect of tubes, and the greysuit sent Zee away and did a bunch of tests, and fed me about a half a cup of a horrible salty-sweet drink, but thankfully removed the tubes. Some time during this I caught sight of my arms, and was holding them up and staring at them when Zee came back with Maze and a different greysuit.

"I look like the world’s worst junkie," I said, still in English, turning my arms to better appreciate their purple and blue glory. I’d never seen anything like it. Even my palms were bruised.

I couldn’t understand what they said back, of course. Maze looked like he’d had a proper rest, so I’m guessing it was a lot later than the first time I woke. They were being pleased I was awake, but serious at the same time, and Zee said something to me slowly which had the word for interface in it a couple of times. I just shrugged, though I was finding that moving hurt and staying still hurt, which didn’t really seem fair. Then I felt all tingly for a moment, and like I was catching up with myself.

"Can you understand now?" the greysuit asked, and I nodded, but put my hand back over my bandaged eye because it had started hurting rather more than anything else. "Some lingering malformation there," the greysuit said helpfully, but did something which made it stop hurting. "It’ll be a few days before the remedial work is complete and the remnant toxins are flushed from her system," he added. "But there doesn’t seem to be any loss of function."

"Mission log’s intact," Maze murmured to Zee, and nodded to the greysuit, who gave me a last glance and went away.

"Everyone alive?" I asked, and saw the no in their faces before Zee answered.

"Ammas from Sixth Squad died during the return to base," she said, and we all looked down at the same time, as if it was rehearsed. "You remember what happened?"

"Up to door." I glanced at my arms again. "It fall on me?"

"No." Zee wrinkled her nose. "Your interface started growing again, destructively beyond prescribed limits. It became non-functional and had to be shut down and pared back." She indicated the purple patterns beneath my skin. "That’s partly the damage and partly slough from the repair work. Your left eye suffered the most, but they don’t expect permanent problems."

Nanotech. I sighed. Convenient as it is, I’d really appreciate it if my interface didn’t keep trying to kill me.

"We’ve only had the outside view of what happened after you reached the door," Maze said, passing me across a log file. From his faintly abstracted expression, I guessed he was reviewing mine, a thing which always makes me feel totally weird.

The log file was Haral’s, watching through the gate as I jogged with a curving wobble toward the end to the Pillar. It wasn’t too obvious at that distance that I ran into the door rather than deliberately stopping, but I stood there for at least a count of five before my brain caught up and I pushed the thing shut. I turned to cross to the other door in a business-like way, but paused in the gap, looking inside.

And then another wave of light came pouring out, filling the entire space with white, and I heard the Setari who’d been watching me gasp, and Nels said: "Tzatch," which Lohn tells me is a shortened version of Tzarazatch, a spiritual concept on Tare kind of like Ragnarok: the destructive end of everything. I can’t get Lohn to tell me any real swear words, but he explains the milder ones.

For about thirty seconds there was nothing but whiteness, and it didn’t even look like it was going to settle as it had the first time, but then it thinned abruptly and was sucked away to nothing, back into the Pillar, leaving the space as clear and empty as it had been the first time I saw it, except for all the unconscious Setari. I was noticeably absent from the doorway.

The fragment of the log finished, and I looked back up at Maze and then blinked, confused. His face was set and furious, a muscle working in his cheek. Zee was staring at him, as surprised as I was, and when she touched his arm he flinched away, then said: "Watch her log," and turned his back, getting himself under control.

Of course, that immediately made me watch it myself, jumping straight to the last bit I remembered: closing the right half of the door. It’s highly disorienting to watch things you don’t remember doing. I only remember stepping forward, don’t remember at all looking into the interior of the Pillar. Most of it was taken up by the central core, with empty space curving off to the right and left. There was a rounded rectangular hatch just about at head height on the internal column, with two big white levers set into the stone below it. By big I mean almost as long as my leg, sticking out of grooves that ran to the right around the Pillar’s core.

The hatch was designed to slide, and was open a crack on the right hand side, making a brilliant white vertical line from which aether drifted down. And as I looked up at that, something interrupted the vertical line, a few black spots blocking the brightness. Fingertips, claws, curving around the hatch from the inside. Then it pulled it open, the movement accompanied by a shifting rumble from the levers, and everything went white.

A black hand shape appeared in view: my hand, trying to block out the light and not really succeeding. And then I must have gone forward, under the main intensity of the blast into the drifting mist of aether falling down from it. The top lever had gone left as the hatch opened, and I seem to have tried pushing it back to the right but wasn’t succeeding. Then I looked upward, into the spotlight glare of white coming out of the hatch, and there was this barely visible human shape, just the head, and shoulders, the arm hooked over the edge of the hatch, reaching. The scene dropped down abruptly – I must have ducked – and then moved right, pushing the lower lever instead of the top, with an accompanying rumble which was loud enough to suggest huge boulders grinding together, stopping with a nicely final thud followed by a hiss and a howling wind noise. The only thing I was looking at, at this point, was the floor, really close to my face. I levered myself partially upright, turned toward the door, and dropped again; must have fallen flat on my ass. Then my hand came up and covered my left eye and lifted away to show rather a lot of red and I bent forward, the scene becoming barely visible. I guess all that aether wasn’t doing enough to block whatever having your eye self-destruct feels like. The last moments of the mission log don’t show much, because I’d closed my eyes, but you can hear me panting and then I say, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light?" and let out this confused-sounding laugh and then the log stops abruptly.

"Glad don’t remember that," I said, after a moment. Maze had stopped looking upset, but Zee had taken his place: not so angry, but eyes wide and mouth pale. "Is thing in Pillar same Lights Rotation?"

"Cruzatch," Maze said, and you could hear the hate in his voice, and see him make the effort to put it aside. The word means "burning", with overtones of destruction.

"There are several spaces they appear, and they also roam. They’re not the only human-form Ionoth we encounter, not the only ones which intelligently react to us. But we have – for a long time there has been discussion about the level of their awareness of the Setari, and whether they retain and learn from previous encounters with us."

"The last massive to break into real-space was accompanied by a Cruzatch," Zee explained. "Almost as if it was riding it. Guiding it." She sighed. "The idea of there being organisation among the Ionoth is not accepted by many."

And certainly hadn’t been mentioned in any of the stories and movies I’d so far seen. "Organised not, that one bloody annoying. What happen it?"

Maze made an equivocal motion with one hand. "No sign. We think you closed the intake of the Pillar’s power stream. We’re not entirely certain why all the aether was pulled back, but the entire Pillar seems to have shut down as a result." He smiled at the expression on my face. "No need to look like that: it’s what we would have tried eventually, if not so soon, and the only thing we’ve really lost is the chance to study the Pillar in more depth. Everyone’s off-rotation, only clearing near-space, because it seems that the surrounding spaces are shifting, and we can’t trust the gates. But you did well, Caszandra. And were very brave."

Although that was hugely gratifying, I doubted it was true. "Blind drunk panic more like," I said. "Don’t remember either way."

"What was it you said before the log cut out?" Zee asked, leaning forward to touch my leg and then stopping. Definitely orders not to touch me.

"Is line famous poem about dying." I repeated it in English, because it makes it slightly easier to work out a translation, then did my best to render it in Taren. "Funny thing say but fit guess. Was really drunk."

I must have fallen asleep then, and had uncomfortable dreams about what I’d seen in my log, and about Maze being angry, and of running and hiding from something chasing me. None of it pleasant, in other words. I keep having dreams like that. Otherwise, being in the med section is the same tedious crap that it always is. The greysuits say I have to stay here because all the bruising means I’m at risk of blood clots. I spent the first couple of days sleeping and coughing up black stuff – blood and phlegm and discarded bits of interface, apparently – and having to move about a lot because it’s good for my circulation.

Everyone from First Squad came to visit me, as well as Zan, still looking tired, but no longer all stressed out. I asked her if she would bring me my diary, and she did, and sat and talked with me a while and was all proper and Zan-like, but just that tiny bit more human than before. I think if I’d died she would have felt responsible, because she’d ultimately given me the order to go. And maybe that she does like me, a little bit anyway.

I’ve been doing school lessons. I don’t really feel like watching shows or the news because the news is full of the impact of shutting the Pillar down, even though it’s been kept secret. The Setari squads have been distributed over Tare because that’s the only way they can effectively patrol the near-space when they can’t use other spaces as shortcuts to get about, which means that there’s more sightings of them, and more outbreaks of Ionoth into the real world. I did that.

I still feel pretty horrible too: tired and sore. Every time I get close to being fit, I nearly die and go back to the start again. And I look like a pirate junkie panda, with a patch and a huge ring around my uncovered eye. It was purple, but now it’s going green with hints of yellow.

This is the longest entry I’ve made in this diary yet, and I’ve passed the halfway point. Will have to do some research on whether there’s any way I can get another one custom-made.

Still alive.

Monday, March 3

Ghost

When I woke this evening (for the second time today – I’m still doing a lot of napping) my chest felt heavy. I was half-awake noticing the weight and worrying that I was getting sicker instead of better and would be stuck in here forever. Then it filtered through to me that my chest was also purring.

I didn’t do anything stupid like jump or shout, but I must have moved, because the purring stopped abruptly. The weight was still there, though, and I lifted a hand carefully and felt the shape of the cat I couldn’t see. The purring started again, and after a while it stopped looking like I was petting my own chest and there was the Ionoth cat.

It was just like I remembered: dark green eyes and short, smoky fur. A half-grown cat, not creepy or scary in any way. For a little while I just let myself enjoy it, petting and playing with it, and establishing that it looked like it was a girl cat, but eventually I had to give in and be responsible.

There’s lots of different ways you can talk to another person over the interface, most of it nothing too different to Earth’s internet. You can’t just open channels to random people, unless you have certain rights, like squad captains during mission time. Usually you can only send a channel request with a text message and it’s up to the people you want to talk with to accept or not, and for the Setari I think most normal people can’t even do that: you have to be in their address book. Or you can email, leave a voice message, or chat just by text. I’d never tried opening a channel before: I’m too aware of how overworked the Setari always seem so if I need something or have a question I send an email.

Since, so far as I know, I’m still assigned to First Squad I sent Maze a channel request: "Is time ask?" Gods I hate my screwed-up grammar. I doubt the baby English I write in my diary even comes close to how dumb I sound to the Tarens.

Anyway, Maze answered right away. "Something bothering you, Caszandra?"

"Is visitor," I replied, and sent him an image of the Ionoth cat sitting on my lap. Then, before he could respond, I quickly went on: "If capture what happen her?"

He paused a long time before answering, then said carefully: "They’ll find a way to scan for it. Then I’ll personally return it to the Ena, since I suspect you’ll accept nothing less."

Maze really is the nicest guy on the planet. "Is big thank you," I said, and he laughed.

"I’m out in the city at the moment, but I’ll send someone to you. You’re not feeling any negative effects?"

"Purring cat good thing."

"Won’t be long."

He left the channel active, in case I started screaming about evil kittens, and I took the opportunity to play with my temporary pet a little more. I’ve decided to call her Ghost, which definitely fits. I didn’t absolutely believe that no-one would try and kill her, but I trusted Maze to do his best to make sure that didn’t happen. I wasn’t entirely sure she would cooperate at all, but I figured that if I stayed calm and no-one made any sudden moves, she’d probably at least not run off the second anyone showed up.

I wasn’t expecting Ruuel, and reacted all out of proportion, stiffening so that Ghost stopped purring, and probably going pink beneath my bruises. What Mr I-Have-Every-Kind-Of-Sight-But-No-Visible-Sense-of-Humour made of my expression I couldn’t tell, but he took the container the two greensuits were carrying and shut them outside.

"Place it in here," he said, moving the container so it was flush with the bed. It was an ominous-looking box, metal and plastic with a rare physical control panel on one corner. And warning signs about containment fields.

I didn’t move immediately, carefully stroking Ghost, who hadn’t scrambled off, but mightn’t like me after this. "Come back and visit me again," I told her in English. "I’m only going to turn you in this once." Scooping her up with a hand beneath her chest, I carefully lowered her into the box, saying, "Her name Ghost."

Ruuel just turned the containment field on, which made Ghost look upset. She vanished, but I don’t think she was able to get out. At least, he didn’t act like he thought she had, turning and opening the door again and handing the box to the greensuits.

I busied myself telling Maze that Ghost was safely in a box, expecting Ruuel to go away again, except he didn’t.

"I had a question for you," he said, when I looked at him. "You referred to the aether as moonlight. Was that simply your ineptitude with our language?"

I could have lived without ineptitude. Ruuel doesn’t dance around shortcomings.

"Is because aether look feel like moonlight Muina when building make liquid," I said, as clearly as I could manage, and had the satisfaction of making his eyes open to more than halfway.

"Building make liquid?" he repeated.

"When moon rise Muina building light…" I had to search around for a word which fit. "Draw? Focus? Become? Thicken? Look feel same aether."

"The buildings on Muina turn moonlight into aether?" I nodded and was given a full-on captain look in return. "It didn’t occur to you to tell anyone this?"

"Is your planet," I said, struggling to keep annoyance out of my voice. "How know what you not know?"

"Wait," was all he said back, developing that gaze-into-nothing look people get when they’re talking over the interface. I took the time to remind myself that these were life-and-death issues, and that there was no point glowering at him just because he’d made me feel in the wrong. I did wish that I hadn’t given him a starring role in so many daydreams, or at least wasn’t sitting in bed dressed in a flimsy patient gown, looking so damn ugly.

Then I was added to a channel with about ten people already in it, a bunch of names I didn’t know, as well as Ruuel, Maze, the Third Squad captain Taarel, and the bluesuit, Selkie.

"Devlin, please explain your experiences with aether on Muina in more detail," Selkie said, all brisk and businesslike.

"Is…moment." I hadn’t expected to be dumped into some high level meeting, and reached for my diary as the simplest way to handle it without sounding defensive. Flipping through a few pages, I said: "First time saw moon, Muina, seven night there. Was still walking river then, no buildings. Just seem like moon to me, bit bigger bluer Earth moon, three quarter full." I paused. "You know has hole in yes?"

"Yes. Go on."

I flipped a few more pages. "Reach village thirteenth day. Moon come out every eight day, so came out after been there couple day, was full. Was sitting on roof tower when rose. Buildings began glow. Faint first, then too strong normal. In centre all roof there circle – rosette? Pattern. All building there have. It glow much strong than rest building. Light – aether – start flow out from circle. I right next circle, touch flow light. Was cold, but made feel warm. Effect like alcohol. After while saw that bigger light centre village. Followed aether there. Think it was flow up hill. In centre village there amphitheatre. Very big circle there. And cats. Cats not there that night, just huge lot liquid moonlight. Centre circle make column light. Very drunk by then. Went stood in column. Passed out. Woke there next day. Felt good."

I sighed, flipping more pages. My moonlight adventures made me sound like a total idiot. "Few days later, sick. Cold all time. Liquid in chest. Fever." I paused, thinking back over the few confused fragments I could call to mind. "Was maybe die. Not conscious most time, several days. Then again moonfall. Too sick move, don’t remember much that. Could see aether fall past window. Made feel warm. Easier breathe. Much better next day. Able move."

The next entry made me frown, and I said doubtfully. "Not sure this. Eyesight strange after. Some things blurry, some not. Thought had damaged. Next day, thought being watch. Feel something behind, see movement corner eye. Thought go insane, imagine monsters. Next day, lots noise, like hills wailing. Ddura, guess. Couldn’t see where come from. Sounds go away, so did feeling watch everywhere. Eyes still blurry. Two day later, Setari show up." I glanced at Ruuel, who had gone back to being impassive, but was watching me very closely. "Don’t remember eyes blurry since ten thousand injections. Is all."

"You could hear the Ddura from real-space?" Selkie asked, with a queer note to his voice.

"Loud. Loudest thing ever heard. Like unhappy mountain."

"I cannot–" someone began, sounding hugely pissed off, but stopped, then said in a sharp but less obviously hostile tone: "Have you observed any other relevant phenomena?"

The speaking indicator told me the person’s name was Lakrin, but I don’t have the access to look up more details about people.

I was wary of just saying no. "Not obvious," I said eventually. "Ddura. On Earth have polar aurora, look like Ddura, but lot bigger. But not make noises. Nothing about Ionoth. Is just, uh, something do radiation from sun? How know whether relevant? Is relevant every place go have cats? Nothing obvious relevant."

"And two worlds' worth of observations an expansive topic," said another voice, a woman called Notra. "The youngster is still in the medical facility, is she not? I will revisit the question of other detail with her separately."

"Very well," Selkie said, and then I was cut from the channel. Military people are like that.

I started to close my diary, but Ruuel slid it out of my hands. Military people are like that, too.

"Symbol Sight can let read?" I asked, sounding nearly as unenthused about that idea as I actually was.

"Not usefully."

He turned several pages back, then pressed two fingertips to one of the pages and closed his eyes. Whatever he was doing – presumably using one of the Sights – didn’t seem to be easy, and little lines of effort or pain appeared around his mouth. But he didn’t do anything more dramatic than that, and after a while opened his eyes and handed my diary back.

"Since Tare found a way to travel through the spaces, we have not encountered our equal in technology," he said, voice measured. "It leads to an assumption that there is little we can learn from those who have not the same achievements. Base stupidity not to debrief you fully about your experiences on Muina. But no sense on your part to assume in return that we know everything about a planet that we are only permitted to visit under exceptional circumstances for a few short hours."

It was hard to argue the point, so I said: "Fair enough," and he nodded and left me to feel annoyed at him for producing even-handedness. I’ll bet he’s considered a strict but impartial sort of squad captain.

Not that strict but impartial is something I ever thought I’d find attractive. And not having a sense of humour should make him totally not worth it. Though I suppose that comment about my lab rat not being inapposite might have been a very dry humour, and I could appreciate that.

He has really nice hands.

When he was gone I went to check myself out in the mirror of the tiny en suite, and confirmed that I was the worst I’ve ever looked. After a while Maze came to visit and told me that Ghost was still in the containment field but not yet scannable. The information I’d given them about Muina is pretty major, apparently, though he doubted they were going to be able to decide exactly what to do about it any time soon.

A weird day, altogether. I’m sick of the medical section.

Tuesday, March 4

Muina Debriefing

I spent a lot of today with Isten Sel Notra, who is some kind of senior scientist. I think she’d be a variety of physicist, if physicists believed in psychic talents, spaces as well as space, and moonlight which could be converted into mist. The main thing I could tell about her is that she’s really smart, a Taren Einstein-type, and she’s kind of a cross between everyone’s favourite grandmother and the strictest headmistress in the universe. She has minions, too, who came along to fuss about her until she sent them away, and she told the medical staff to bring me some better clothes and took me to a kind of meeting lounge so that we could both sit comfortably.

Old age is a little hard to judge on Tare. They’re quite happy to use their nanotechnology for cosmetic purposes, and it’s really rare to see anyone with any kind of blemish or birthmark or more than fine wrinkles, though they don’t seem to have figured out how to stop their hair going white. They can get rid of, or at least reduce, most cancers, but they still get old and frail. Best I can tell, retirement age would be between eighty and ninety, and a good lifespan would be a hundred and twenty. Their oldest person (I just looked this up) lived to be a hundred and forty seven (well, four hundred and forty-two). Isten Notra is old. Frail-old, though still able to get about, and still sharper than I’ll ever dream of being.

Isten Notra is also interested in absolutely everything. She asked a lot about the moonfalls, of course, wanting to know what happened to the aether once it reached the amphitheatre (I think it drained away underneath – not sure) and whether it felt exactly like alcohol or just similar (kind of) and whether the aether in the Pillar space felt different from the aether on Muina (no) and whether I thought I was sick because of the first exposure to aether (no) and if I really thought the second moonfall had helped me recover from being sick (yes). Whether I ever saw the buildings glowing at other times (no). Whether the roof decorations had felt unusual or different to me other than during moonfall (um). Whether there was any unusual noise during moonfall (I think mainly I remember an absence of noise – all the animals had gone very quiet).

Then we moved on to what I’d eaten on Muina and what I’d eaten on Earth. Things I’d seen in the village. Animals I’d seen. Animals that appeared to belong to both planets. What level of psychic talent there was on Earth, if at all. Whether there was anything resembling Muina structures on Earth, or legends about Muinan culture. The only thing I could come close to thinking of in terms of psychic legends was Atlantis, and I’m sure Mum told me once that the original stories didn’t have anything about magic or strange powers in it, that they were added later.

Isten Notra is also the only person on this entire planet who has ever corrected my grammar and pronunciation, or made me repeat sentences until I get them right. She started our talk by giving me handy tips about ways to better manage verb-forms and sentence structure. And then went off on a huge tangent about language, and Earth’s languages and development of communication and what I would have been doing on Earth if I hadn’t ended up on Muina, and she pried out of me that I thought studying the origin of myths would be an interesting thing to do but didn’t think it would be very likely to get me a job. And all the while turning the whole discussion into examples of how to handle trying to talk in a language I don’t really know, not letting me be sloppy, and insisting I work the sentences out properly before trying to say them, no matter how long that took. Isten Notra’s minions kept popping in with snacks and lunch and to ask her if there was anything she needed and to give me scandalised looks because they heard me talking about vampires and zombies to someone Lohn later confirmed was one of the most respected scientists on the planet.

It was a great day. Isten Notra’s a really special sort of person, with not a lot of time to spare, and she gave a whole heap of it to me.

And I was outside of my medroom box, which was also a bonus.

Wednesday, March 5

Someone call the wahmbulance

Ista Tremmar took off my eye-patch today. They’ve been changing the big adhesive covering daily, but my eye was taped shut underneath. Today they lowered the lights, pulled off the tape, and shone little torches at me. Then, after another tedious medical exam, they released me. I have check-ups and tests scheduled, and nothing else whatsoever, not even training.

I should have been happy. Not so much at the nothing scheduled, but being let out of my latest box. Glorious illusion of freedom. But, you see, my eye is wrong.

I have hazel eyes. Brown and green with some flecks of blue. I still have hazel eyes, but flecks of purple and violet have been added to the left one, and combined with the blue it drowns out the brown and green. It looks pretty cool, but I hate it. Because it’s not my eye any more and every time I look in the mirror it’s telling me I don’t exist any more. I’m not a girl from Sydney who loves reading and games and was about to start uni and hadn’t quite decided what she was going to do in the long run. I’m not Cass here. Devlin most of the time, and Caszandra occasionally. I’m a stray, and it’s not just what people call me, it’s what I am inside: something out of place. My main goals are to learn a tiresome language, and to avoid getting anyone killed until I can figure out a way to get home. Not dying is also a goal. I don’t like to count up the number of times I’ve nearly died since I was rescued. At least this last time I achieved something before falling apart.

So now that I’ve finally been released and can wander about, I’ve spent the day moping on my couch. I should be grateful for having an eye at all, but instead I’m busy trying not to let myself get too upset, because I might take another sleep-walking excursion to Earth and I’d hate to have to be rescued again, but at the same time I can’t help but acknowledge that I haven’t done anything at all to try and work out how I reached Earth’s near-space, and how I can get home safely.

Hiding how unhappy I am right now is important to stop them from monitoring me more and more, especially since my immunity to the aether makes me an even more interesting lab rat. I have no wish to confide in the greysuit who has had a session with me every day since I woke, chatting with me in a way which screams psych evaluation. Or perhaps they’re a trauma counsellor, but in that case I can’t like them for not coming out and saying so.

I wish I could stop having nightmares. I guess I really was in a blind panic back in the Pillar since my dreams are filled with scary things snatching at me, and I wake sweating and panting, with a hand clutched over my eye. I don’t think I’d make the grade as a Setari, even if I had psychic powers, and it’s a good thing that they have no plans to put me back on active duty any time soon.

First Squad is off on some island called Gorra. I really appreciate that Zee emails me every so often and lets me know what’s going on with them, and with the shifting about caused by the Pillar shutting off. They’re slowly checking which of the known routes still exist, and trying to work out ways through the spaces which allow them to easily get to the same locations in near-space that they could previously access. Everyone’s scheduling has been thrown madly off, and they’re all working double-time trying to make up the ground they’ve lost.

Bleh – this is not a fun day. It needs to hurry up and be over.

Thursday, March 6

Professionally sozzled

This morning I had aether tests. Now that I’m no longer in danger, merely covered in yellow bruises, tender and stiff and occasionally shaky, they’ve decided to try and find out why I react so differently to aether from everyone else. Which means I spent this morning getting drunk.

Since they’re wary of setting off my interface, and are trying to work out why it started growing again, they only gave me enough aether for a minor buzz. So I was bored but cheerful. I swear I must have had more brain scans than anyone on any planet. At least I had the warning signs in the containment room to entertain me. "Danger – toxic substances!" plastered everywhere, in and out of the interface.

They released me around lunch time, but I was in no mood for school work. Mildly defiant, or perhaps still a little drunk, I went swimming. Nothing too strenuous, just to get the kinks out, and I think I’ll keep going unless someone remembers I’m supposed to have an escort.

While I was floating about pretending that was exercise, I abruptly gained a brand new level of access, accompanied by an email from Isten Notra directing me to a huge collection of files. "Your assignment while you’re in testing and recovery is to review the information we’ve collected on Muina and to notify me of any possible relevant parallel with your world."

Homework! I haven’t the foggiest idea if I’ll find anything useful, but it’s definitely something new and tangible for me to do.

The Muina collection, however, was not nearly so interesting to me at first glance as everything else this access level let me look at. They’ve reclassified me as a Setari, and now I can see things like everyone’s calendar, the space, rotation and Ionoth libraries, squad profiles and a general noticeboard. After months of being a mushroom, this is a serious adjustment.

I have to admit the first thing I wanted to do was indulge my increasing curiosity about Ruuel. It was only the recollection of playing "Browser History of Shame" over at friends' houses which held me back. Instead I checked out First Squad’s profile, opening Zee’s details first. Talent set and ratings, mission history. No doubt plenty of stuff I couldn’t see. Next I methodically opened and read the details of each squad captain in order, and if I lingered a little longer over Ruuel then that might be excused by the fact that he has eleven talents. All the Sights and Speed rated high, then low ratings in Ena Manipulation, Telekinesis, Levitation and Light.

That pointless piece of self-indulgence over with, I turned to the Ionoth library (the Bestiary!) to look up cats. And found out that Ghost has escaped. Yay Ghost! I hope she comes to visit me again, but I expect that she won’t be trusting me any more.

After browsing randomly for a while, quite overwhelmed by how much information there was, I glanced over the Muina collection. And pounced on a report from a few months ago. An expedition to Muina to investigate a Ddura detected in the planet’s near-space.

I was in Additional Notes. "Displaced person, young female, recovered from secondary site. Uninjured, condition poor. Stickie scan negative. Not from known language group. Submitted for processing."

My so momentous rescue. The attached log was fascinating though, giving me some idea of how the Sight talents operate. After arriving at the town, Fourth Squad started out near my wool-boiling operation, which made it obvious straight away that someone was there. Those with Place Sight could see glowing footprints everywhere: mine and those of different animals, and even my handprints all over the bowls. The squad split into pairs, apparently confident there was no major danger nearby.

Watching my Muinan town through Ruuel’s eyes made me feel both stalker-ish and hypocritical, and really brought home to me why the Setari are so damn proper most of the time. I expect it’s a rare thing for anyone to review entire mission logs, but you sure as hell wouldn’t want to spend your time checking out a squad member’s butt while out on mission, or gossiping about other teams.

It was also beyond confusing seeing as Ruuel does. Auras everywhere, and strange patterns where patterns shouldn’t be: art nouveau heat hazes. And that was only visual input. Most of the Sights are far more than visual, so I hate to think how much information someone with six Sights is processing, and can better understand why Ruuel nearly collapsed staring at the Ddura while enhanced. I don’t think all the Sights are on all the time, though, since there were times when my Muinan town looked entirely normal. Perhaps it’s like changing channels, and he flicks through them.

I felt no nostalgia seeing my tower again, was simply glad not to be there as my trackers easily cleared away my makeshift door and passed the clutter of junk I’d kicked down the stair, then the second floor I’d been in the process of clearing. Then they were on the third floor, Fort Cass, with my bowls of washews and red pears carefully lined up, and my pathetic collection of tools in their corner. My bag. My blanket. Me.

Huddled in my stained and worn school uniform, with my hair greasy and lank, I looked bony and ill. Condition poor. Ruuel looked at me with normal sight first, then one which made me light up in dull greens and blues and reds.

"She’s been here some time," said Ruuel’s partner, Sonn, over the interface.

"Weeks, not days," he agreed.

"The time limit’s close. What do we do with her while we look for a gate?" An edge of irritation had crept into Sonn’s voice. They weren’t there for me.

But Ruuel didn’t seem overly concerned, turning from studying the ceiling to look at me as I stirred groggily. "Put her down at the lake’s edge for the escort to collect."

I watched myself perform this magnificent recoil worthy of a scalded cat. So scared. Ruuel just changed whatever Sight he was using and started looking around the room again, seeing a strange overlaid image of rubble, and a few different fragmentary ghosts of me.

"Do you understand me?" Sonn asked in Taren, then said almost the same thing, but pronounced the words differently.

"Who are you?" past me said, staring back and forth between them.

Sonn tried again. I swapped later to watch her log, and she was carefully sounding out the same question using a "Stray Encounter Guide" which had a little stock of useful phrases from the languages of strays which had been picked up in the past. They’re all wildly varying dialects of Muinan, which is something I couldn’t tell at the time.

"Nothing you’re saying sounds like anything I know," past me said.

"Not getting anywhere," Sonn murmured.

"Just use gestures," Ruuel said. "We don’t have the time to waste with this." He left to go up on the roof, telling the rest of his squad to keep scanning for gates.

The time limit for visits to Muina is strictly enforced. Looking over the whole of the mission report, they’d started out miles away, at the ruins of a major city where a network of scanning drones had been installed both in real-space and near-space.

Robotics here are more advanced than Earth’s but the AI is still nowhere near real AI, so there are limitations to tasks drones can perform. The news about the Ddura had involved a complicated chain of drone messages. They have drones seeded about the spaces near the big interplanetary rift on Muina which stay powered down most of the time, waking themselves up on a regular schedule to scan. Another drone wakes itself up and collects the scans, and yet another drone travels back and forth between Muina and Tare with the collected scans. A Ddura had passed by the scanning drones, and that was enough to get Fourth Squad hurriedly sent out, two days later, in the hopes that it was still about.

Once they reached the city, they’d gone straight into near-space to get the latest information from the drones there and to try and track the Ddura. They were able to calculate the direction it had moved and had chased off after it in their ship, finding my town as a consequence, where they’d stopped to see if they could find a gate and look for it there. And found me instead.

Leaving me sitting on the lakeshore, Fourth Squad had located a gate a short distance south of the town and gone through. After two days they weren’t surprised that the Ddura was gone, but they’d been able to identify which gate it had gone through, though how something as big as that aurora goes through those little gates I don’t know. They’d tried tracking it until the constraints of their time limit had forced them to return.

I think I’m going to have to go through the Muina files from beginning to end rather than jumping about. Why, for instance, aren’t they searching that big city for records? Sssso much technical jargon: it’s like someone gave me everything NASA has ever written.

Friday, March 7

tl;dr

I decided, before I started on my file review, to read more generally about Muina and Tare, now that I had access to more than the primary school textbook version of the past. Establishing a timeline will help. I’ll write it down in Earth years because Tare years are just too stupidly short.

@ 1500 years ago – The Lantaren caste on Muina screw up royally by creating Pillars which start tearing apart the fabric which divides real-space from the Ena. And then they’re almost completely wiped out trying to fix their screw up. I missed this little detail before – the people who set up the Pillars died almost at the outset, leaving a serious information and leadership vacuum.

@ 1500 years ago – Entire towns and cities begin dropping dead, and Ionoth plague the rest. The remaining Lantaren caste frantically evacuates everyone they can to other planets by walking thousands of people through the Ena (some through the kind of spaces I’ve been to on rotation, and others through something called deep-space).

@ 1500 years ago – One group arrives on Tare, which is a wet rock constantly pounded by storms. They run for the nearest cave and struggle to survive underground. The Lantarens as a distinct caste disappear at this point, but the bloodline remains mixed into the general populace. Plenty of minor psychics about being useful, but they’re treated as a necessary evil because for centuries it was considered a bad and tainted thing to be linked to the Lantarens, who are blamed and hated for what happened to Muina.

@ 1400 – Muinans finally start to get the upper hand on Tare, and their life becomes less of a desperate struggle for survival. The population starts to go up instead of down. Proper written records start being kept, or stop being lost. Even at this point the Tarens have a kind of nanotech – all those white buildings on Muina are basically grown, not built, from a kind of living mud developed by the Lantarens. The Tarens managed to bring some with them and maintain a seed stock of this mud and have built structures with it ever since, even though they had no real understanding of how it worked until the last couple of centuries. House-building here is ultimately bizarre: they start with a big vat of white goop which they feed with raw material to make more white goop which they then instruct using little models to create big versions of the same. So long as they kept some of the white goop unformed they could always make more white goop. Since the white goop hasn’t absorbed the whole planet yet, I guess it has a mechanism to stop it spreading everywhere.

@ 900 years ago – Tare has a strong and stable civilisation at this point, and is starting to branch out from the original island, Gorra, and establish on other islands. World exploration phase, somewhat hampered by extremely violent oceans.

@ 300 years ago – The attitude toward psychic ability finally shifts enough that it’s considered a good rather than a bad thing, and the Tarens actively try breeding for it. Later, once they figure out how to boost it with machinery, they find that psychic talent of some sort is almost universal in the population, although they don’t have anyone who can even come close to the level of the old Lantarens.

@ 200 years ago – Computer age begins.

@ 120 years ago – Advanced nanotech age begins. At this point they’ve passed Earth’s current level of technology and are beginning the first roll-out of the bio-powered interface.

@ 100 years ago – Tarens build spaceships which will allow them to travel through the interplanetary gate again. This gate (or rift) goes to deep-space and is thick with aether and doesn’t seem to be like either the gates I’ve travelled with First, or the gate which took me from Earth to Muina. The Tarens start hunting for habitable planets/Muina, which is by no means easy. They send off and lose a lot of drones.

@ 90 years ago – A planet called Channa is located, which has an ex-Muinan population. It’s a rocky, arid world and not very attractive as a colonisation prospect, so the Tarens set up some mines on an unsettled continent, and indulge in long ethical debates about what to do about the ex-Muinans who are living a harsh, nomadic hunter-gatherer life. Instead of stepping in and trying to take over, the Tarens disguised themselves, learned the dialect, and have been feeding them small technological advances, turning them into a more agrarian culture. Since Channa’s Ionoth infestation was relatively minor, they’ve left it at that until recent years when, like all the other known planets, Channa started to suffer from much increased Ionoth numbers. Now there’s a huge argument about whether Tare should lend more outright assistance or even try to remove several million Channans from the planet.

@ 80 years ago – Located Nuri, a moon-sized planet with a small but stable population (tech level probably equal to the Romans). The Nurans seem to consider Taren technology a contaminant, and though there’s been some diplomatic exchanges, the Nurans really don’t want to have anything to do with the Tarens, and won’t share information. They also seem inclined to hold the Tarens at fault for the recent increase in Ionoth infestation. The Nurans have the strongest natural psychic powers of the known planets, and have been able to handle Ionoth up till now, but are thought to be struggling with the increase.

@ 60 years ago – Located Dyess, which has the remains of Muinan-type habitation, but it seems Dyess was overwhelmed by Ionoth long ago. It’s a watery world with a string of tropical islands crawling with things that consider humans tasty with ketchup. There’s been quite a few expeditions there focused on collecting useful plant life, but the slivers of land mass are not considered worth colonisation.

@ 50 years ago – Located Kolar, which is a dry but reasonably habitable world where ex-Muinans have been busy having wars with Ionoth and occasionally themselves. It’s the most advanced technologically of those Tare has encountered and though they would have been more primitive than Earth at time of contact, they’re now a little more advanced thanks to Tare’s help. The Tarens and the Kolarens don’t have a very warm relationship. The Kolarens really want the Tarens to share more of their technological secrets, while Tare likes Kolaren resources but not the prospect of them standing on an equal footing. Kolar has an internet, but the Tarens won’t give anyone except the Kolaren Setari the interface. Of course, large portions of Kolar don’t want the interface, and loathe all the potential violations of privacy it would bring.

@ 30 years ago – Muina rediscovered. Much rejoicing till entire expeditionary force wiped out in an explosion. Repeated expeditionary attempts invariably wiped out, although in different ways.

@ 30 years ago – KOTIS formed: theoretically a joint venture between Tare and Kolar, but in truth mainly Tare. This was in response to a noticeable increase in Ionoth presence across the known worlds, and also wanting to fix Muina. Both Tarens and Kolarens consider Muina home and there’s this grand ambition to move back there.

@ 18 years ago – Tare is suffering from more and more Ionoth coming through to real-space and has to devote a lot of time and manpower to fighting them. They begin a big push to increase the strength of psychic talents, formulating the Setari program in the hopes of moving the battle out of the cities. Which has been very effective, but in no way fixes the larger problem.

So that’s the interplanetary situation. I can see why Ruuel doesn’t think there’s much chance of them finding Earth, since it took them so long to find their own home world. Thanks to the strays which have shown up on Tare and Kolar, they know there’s at least three other inhabited planets of Muina-descendents, and they haven’t even been able to find them.

Thirty years ago when they found Muina, the Tarens didn’t know very much about why they’d had to leave Muina in the first place other than "everyone’s dying, run away!". Why the Lantarens felt interplanetary travel was so important is a mystery, and so is how the Pillars were created. Not a single one of the core group of people involved in setting any of this up on Muina made it to any of the known worlds.

There are endless stories about the Lantarens, most of which make them out to be arrogant mystic masters, but beyond being really great psychics, the true scope and nature of their powers isn’t known.

So there’s my context for starting Isten Notra’s project, though I’m not sure how quickly I’ll get that done when my mornings involve getting drunk and then sleeping it off. And still feeling tired in the evening.

Saturday, March 8

Early Muina Expeditions

Thirty years ago a drone returned through the rift gate having charted a path to a new habitable planet. The exploratory ship Lonara was despatched with a crew of twenty to survey the find. As planets go, Muina’s a juicy one. Large polar caps and a few arid splotches, but the rest a very habitable green and blue gem. Lots of lakes. Massive cities of empty, white blockish buildings. The Lonara did a quick aerial survey of the first big city they found, and could see no sign of human life, though plenty of animals. They set down on what looked like a parade ground, left a few drones, and reported back that the home world had been located at last.

Both the Lonara and another ship, the Tsaszen, were sent to begin a more detailed exploration. Fifty crew altogether, a mixture of military and scientific specialists. The Tarens had known that Muina was dangerous – or had been when it was evacuated – so they’d expected to find it infested with Ionoth. But even before the Setari program began they’d developed plenty of effective anti-Ionoth weapons, and without their own cities and citizens in the way, that first expedition wasn’t really expecting major problems.

They didn’t report back.

A third ship, the Maszar, discovered only smoking rubble where the expedition was meant to be. The Maszar searched for survivors and found none, then returned to Tare. It was really sad reading the reports from that time. They had no idea what had happened. Had the ships been attacked by massives? Some kind of weapon? Sabotaged? There was a strong undertone in the reports that Kolar was suspected. The Maszar hadn’t even been able to find the drones.

There was a lot of debate about going back in force or sending a small and very quiet mission. Small and quiet eventually won out. A ship called the Danna, carrying ten people. They tried to be sneaky, staying in the air a long time, landing well away from the city, scanning, scanning, scanning, and deploying a dozen drones. Half of them stayed with the ship and the other half went on a sled (sled is roughly what deeli, their name for their hovering transporters, translates to) to the site of the other crash to investigate. They arrived without incident and began sifting through the rubble, performing scans and searching for what seems to be the equivalent of a black box flight recorder. They were making good progress, not troubled at all by Ionoth or any other sign of attack, when they lost contact with their ship.

When yet another ship was despatched to investigate why the Danna hadn’t returned, they found the five from the investigatory group camped beside the Danna's shattered hulk. They had no idea why it had exploded. There’d been no attacks in the two days since, and they’d continued to do their scans and investigatory work and were very glad to be rescued, thank you very much.

It took another exploding ship, the Netz, before KOTIS instituted a rule about ships only being able to remain on the planet for twelve hours. For their next attempt they established a camp of people on-planet and left them there, with regular two-day check-ins. That worked really well for about a week, and they made good progress on exploring the city, looking for records and important structures and anything to unravel the mysteries of the past and present. It seemed smaller machines didn’t explode as quickly. Drones tended to not last more than a few days, but their sleds proved quite robust.

Then a massive attacked them. About half the thirty people there died – were eaten. They tried again, a different site with more people. Four days later they vanished entirely, not even the bodies remaining, and no signs of battle.

That all in the first year after Muina was re-discovered. And, twenty-nine years later, not much has changed. The Taren government reduced the permitted time on the planet to only three kasse. When they began to understand near-space a little better, they found that drones they set to power down instead of being constantly active usually didn’t stop working. The drones trundle about, a bit like the Mars Explorer, recording everything they see for an hour or so, and then transmit their recordings to a collection drone and shut down for the day.

Satellites in orbit don’t explode, at least, and they’ve one up making a complete aerial world map. GoogleMuina! I could even look up my village. I still haven’t scratched the surface of the reports, just skipped through the main details. There’s too many for me to ever hope to read everything. And I haven’t found a single thing that seems worth telling Isten Notra. I guess I’ll keep glancing at the files, but I’ve lost my initial enthusiasm.

On other fronts, more getting drunk in the morning to no visible benefit. They rather over-exposed me, and I passed out mid-session. There is a complete lack of fun in getting drunk while a bunch of serious people watch you and take notes.

I did better swimming today: I’m starting to feel that exercise isn’t a thing of horror. I sent an email to Zan telling her that if she’s ever bored, or not exhausted, and wants more swimming practice to come join me and she replied with "I’ll do that." But since she’s on a different shift, I guess the chances are pretty low.

Sunday, March 9

Not Clint Eastwood

This morning Tsur Selkie came to watch me be drunk. After observing through a viewing window, unenhanced and then enhanced, he had some poor junior greysuit stand next to me while they gassed us both. The greysuit was this short, very pretty guy who sweated and gritted his teeth even before the aether was piped in, and then shot me these outraged looks when I just lay there being bored while it was obviously hurting him plenty. He passed out fairly quickly.

Then Tsur Selkie had them pipe just a puff of aether over his own hand and my hand, watching with those flinty black eyes. He continues to remind me of Clint Eastwood, even though he doesn’t look at all like him.

"Is same reaction, but reversed," I said helpfully, while Tsur Selkie was watching our hands. "Both lose fine motor control, reaction time slow, plus judgment, plus pass out. Is just way feel different. And healing or dying, guess. Are there any famous actor this world that people say you look like?"

That made him look up. I suppose it’ll go in the mission log file. I can only be glad, since they’d decided to try out Sight Sight, that they hadn’t used Ruuel for it. Who knows what I might have said to him?

"The difference is not in your reaction," Selkie said, after a moment. "But in the behaviour of the aether. It is attacking me."

That made me stare. "Is alive? Or more nanotech?"

"Possibly. The Nurans claim that we made Muina itself our enemy. The next question is why it recognises you as a friend."

"Everyone like Australians," I said, with a short laugh, but then sobered a little. "People from Earth, not good for own planet. Don’t see why another would like."

He just turned away, signalling for them to open the doors.

"Wait." I reached out and grabbed his wrist, trying not to look too embarrassed about it. "Try test again."

Clint Eastwood’s not the sort of guy you go about grabbing. And Tsur Selkie definitely isn’t. But after a moment’s thought he told them to try again, and stood there without changing expression as the jet of aether gusted out to cover his hand. Then he said: "Increase the amount."

I wasn’t in the channel where most of the discussion was happening, so lay there working on the retention of minor shreds of dignity while watching Tsur Selkie get squiffy. He handled it well, but you could see the change, the gradual unfocusing of his eyes, the line of concentration appearing between the brows. Prime target for a random breath test.

By then I was finding most everything amusing, so I piped up with: "Drunk on duty. Ten demerit points." And laughed at the way he frowned at me, but sneakily went on: "Going pass out soon. Can stop?"

First he had to test what happens when he was no longer in contact with me: an instant return of all the negative effects. I didn’t even trust myself to stand up, and let myself go to sleep again. Waste of half the day and now I’m too wired to sleep.

Monday, March 10

Sacrifice

The parents of Setari candidates give up their children to the government. There’s lots of movies here about that. About families who are like soccer moms, who want the prestige of their kid being taken into the Setari program, no matter what. About others who try and hide that their kids have strong psychic abilities, who do everything they can to discourage them from excelling. I watched a sad story a few days ago, about the sister of a girl who was taken into the Setari program, who had to fight to have anyone acknowledge her as anything more than that girl’s sister. She killed herself in the end.

I spent today thinking about Sixth Squad, about the guy called Ammas who died, and how his parents must have felt when they were told. Were they angry? Had they pushed him into the Setari program, or resisted his conscription? Had he been given leave to go see them recently? Did he have any sisters, or someone he was in love with? Were there things he wanted to do other than kill monsters?

The Setari aren’t by any means without rights, and there’s several oversight committees, but to develop their talents they’re pushed in a way which hovers between strict and cruel. While they’re not allowed to be sent into battle until they pass their adult competency exam, and they really are given chances to leave the Setari, there’s no way they can gain truly strong talents without giving up most of their childhood. It’s useful remembering that whenever I get into a grump and feel like complaining.

With the severe increase of incursions into real-space, and the repeated sightings of Setari on the main islands, there’s a lot – seriously a lot – of speculation about what’s been going on these last couple of weeks. That they’ve found a Pillar and shut it off is one of the many things rumoured, but nothing about so many teams coming so close to dying, and nothing about me. The Setari might have oversight committees, but KOTIS is by no means open to public curiosity. I wonder if there’s an Unexpectedly Useful Strays oversight committee?

No getting drunk today, just a regular medical exam, so I swam in the morning and didn’t manage too badly. I think the aether sessions might have helped my recovery along. I tried to be super-virtuous and go jogging after lunch, but there was a sports carnival on. Well, a competition with at least three hundred kids aged all the way from little six year-olds to people my own age. If I’d bothered to check the scheduling I would have seen that the park was booked.

They had uniforms, too, though not black nanoliquid ones. Brown and cream, obviously designed for sports. I hastily sat down after walking in, glad that I was back from the action, but too embarrassed to walk straight back out again when all the people nearby had seen me. I always feel like such an impostor in my black uniform, because I’ve seen enough of the TV series about the girl trying to qualify as a Setari to know how much of a mark of achievement it is. Though I suppose it’s possible most of them knew what I was anyway, and maybe that’s half the reason they were looking at me. I’m not sure if the matter of useful strays has been allowed even outside the main body of the Setari.

They were so deadly serious about the competition. They did cheer, and barrack for their friends, but even the little ones scrambled over the obstacle course as if their lives depended on it. I guess it does. I wasn’t in whatever channel they were using, and didn’t try to find it, using the time for more flipping through Muina reports instead. I didn’t turn the name display on, because some of these kids are probably going to end up like Ammas.

Tuesday, March 11

Little to contribute

I’m not getting anywhere with Isten Notra’s assignment. After reading endlessly I can’t think of a single thing to tell her which doesn’t sound lame, so there goes my hidden ambition to point out that the dog didn’t bark in the night, or the parsley hadn’t sunk in the butter, or any other Sherlockian observation. I was sticking to it, though, paging through increasingly tedious reports, but more than a little relieved when Mara came and kidnapped me for dinner in the city with First Squad, who have finally been posted back to KOTIS headquarters.

It was a great outing. We went to a place which sold food pastes similar to hummus and refried beans, with different edible spoons ranging from hard brown bread to the now-familiar vegetable sticks. I immediately thought of it as the "Hot and Cold Dip Shop". Lohn was being very funny, and kept saying: "Ten demerit points" whenever anyone accidentally knocked a glass. He says he’s my eternal slave forever, just for the expression on Tsur Selkie’s face.

"Is Setari allowed drink alcohol?" I asked, since I’d only ever seen First Squad drink water and juices.

"Not in any quantity," Alay said, tilting her glass. "Even if we weren’t actively serving, the risk is too great. I’ve tried alcohol, but the rule against control-diminishing substances is only good sense."

"Tsur Selkie main guy in charge Setari training?"

"A dominant force in our development, say." Maze seemed even more tired and worn-down than usual, but he produced a wry smile at this. "I have to admit to re-watching that testing session more than a few times. So Selkie looks like a famous actor from your planet?"

I tried very unsuccessfully to explain Clint Eastwood, and then moved on to Johnny Depp, and now all of First Squad except Maze have sworn to find a path to Earth so they can watch Pirates of the Caribbean.

Afterwards, Zee took me to have my hair cut. There are apparently hairdressers available in KOTIS for the brownsuits, who are properly called Kalrani (juniors), but they’re what you’d expect for school barbers, and so Zee took me to the place she uses. I had my hair neatened, without doing anything fancy to it, but I feel much less of a scruff now that the split ends have been cut out and the ends aren’t so jagged. Not that it makes much of a difference, since I’ve taken to braiding it.

As we walked back I talked to Zee about my eye changing colour. I’ve moved past my first reaction to it, and was able to tell her that it makes me feel uncomfortable, without transforming into a rampaging drama llama. And I told her about my nightmares, which I felt safe to talk about now that I’d stopped having them every damn night.

Then I asked Zee about Nils in Second Squad chasing her, and she said: "In his dreams." And changed the subject.

Wednesday, March 12

Fun

More getting drunk on aether. Though I wonder if I should be writing high instead of drunk, since I’m breathing not drinking. I guess I don’t like the idea of high, which is very contradictory of me since alcohol is just another drug. Party oil, as Perry called it: no big deal, just something to make things go. Alyssa had made me promise never to drink without her, which I haven’t technically, but even though I’m legally old enough now, I don’t think Alyssa – let alone Mum – would be impressed with my current career. There’s something less than special about having breakfast, then lying on a couch being all tingly until I pass out.

On the flip side, I have lots of medical supervision, and I’m even trying to be conscientious about exercise. This afternoon I went both swimming and jogging, though I’d have skipped the jogging except Zan came and joined me for the swimming (yay!) and I asked her if there was somewhere I could jog which wasn’t quite so visible and well-populated as the obstacle-course park. She showed me a different training area, an endless maze of corridors and stairwells and the occasional ladder. This is probably a better thing for overall fitness than just jogging lightly in a circle, but gods I barely managed one circuit going at a pace which really wasn’t more than a walk. Way too many stairs. My legs were jelly afterwards.

Zan kept pace with me, not looking like it was costing her the mildest effort, and told me afterwards that I shouldn’t try and run the circuit at all, just walk it once a day, taking as much time as I needed. I can’t say I’m eager, but at least I would be without an audience, barring other people doing the course overtaking me.

We ate together after, and talked over one of the books she’d recommended: a historical novel set in Tare’s past, before they had the interface. Pre-Setari too, with an epic quest to uncover lost Muinan records in caves deep below Unara. She made me miss Alyssa so bad. I just can’t bring myself to ask Zan to rate the smex level.

Instead I asked about the sports event I’d walked in on, and Zan explained that winning those things, while it gets you some nice privileges, doesn’t count toward whether you qualify to become a full-fledged Setari. And that’s what the Kalrani are very focused on at the moment: they’re choosing Thirteenth and Fourteenth Squads from those who have reached the right age and passed the aptitude tests. There’s about twenty-five of them who are of age, one of whom will have to be slotted into Sixth Squad. Fifteenth and Sixteenth Squad won’t be formed for at least two Taren years.

"Does anyone not qualify ever? What happen them if that happen?"

Zan answered in the extra-neutral tone she uses whenever the internal politics of the Setari are involved. "While there are some still Kalrani who are more senior than the members of Eleventh and Twelfth Squad, if it was felt that it was not possible for them to qualify, they wouldn’t have reached this stage of the program. But forming a balanced and effective Squad is more complex than matters of age and qualifications. They’ll be brought into active service when there is the right team for them."

I wondered if this touched on the reasons some Setari were so nasty to Zan, but kept my mouth shut about that and instead thanked her for showing me all the torturous stairs. She said she’d come swim with me if our schedules matched up again. Definite progress on the Zan front.

And now, while I was writing this, I’ve been scheduled to test with Fourth Squad tomorrow. I think I’m looking forward to it, but I have to wonder if Ruuel’s too-many Sights mean that he’ll look at me and see right through to all the shivery anticipation the thought of him creates. Alyssa used to say that time spent with impossible-to-achieve guys is time well spent because it gives you a chance to find reasons not to like them. But I don’t feel equal to dealing with Ruuel right now.

Ah well – the worst that can happen is that I can make a total idiot of myself, and have that immortalised in mission reports forever. Such a lot to look forward to.

Thursday, March 13

Fourth Squad

There was an email from Ruuel when I woke: "We’ll be combining this test with productive work, so be prepared for an extended session."

Given how sore my legs were after all those stairs yesterday, my first reaction was to use what Dad would call "ripe and illustrative words". But I decided it was a good thing. Setari exploring the Ena aren’t going to be the slightest bit interested in my internal monologue.

The contrast between my last squad testing session and this one was massive, but it started out almost identically, with Fourth Squad standing in a circle in the middle of the same test room. The difference being that as soon as I walked into the room, Ruuel brought me into a squad channel and began the briefing, moving so that his back was no longer turned toward me. Tiny things, but underpinning a vastly different attitude.

"We’ll test in the same order that we will rotate enhancement, starting from myself to Sonn, then Auron, Ferus, Halla, Eyse. Ferus, you’ll be primarily responsible for ensuring Devlin’s safety, with Auron as your flank. You’ve observed the techniques Spel used to bypass the resistance to enhanced Telekinesis and Levitation. We’ll save testing Combat Sight and Speed for the combat simulation rather than individually, and concentrate on the attack elements. Devlin, report any new or unusual reactions immediately."

Ruuel would have been a disconcerting team captain to start out with: he basically sets the bar high and expects you to get over it. I suppose he would have taken it slower if I hadn’t worked with First Squad already, but he sure likes to get through things quickly, testing unenhanced Levitation, Telekinesis and Light talents and then enhancing and going through them again in less than a minute. Unenhanced he can lift maybe a hundred kilos, and enhanced about four times that. With his Light talent he created a curving spike from his arm, much the same as the nanoliquid swords. Enhanced it distorted the same way as Mara’s whip, shifting colour and becoming more intense, but not too spectacularly different.

It’s more interesting for me doing these tests now that I can look up squad information before each person tests. Fourth Squad is evenly broken into guys and girls. The girls are Fiar Sonn (primaries of Ena Manipulation, Combat Sight and Electricity), Charan Halla (Place Sight, Gate Sight) and Mori Eyse (Path Sight, Combat Sight, Teleportation). My two minders are both guys. Par Auron is very tall, about six foot four, with primaries of Path Sight, Gate Sight and Levitation. Glade Ferus is my height, with primaries of Telekinesis, Combat Sight, Symbol Sight and Speed. They both have minors of Ice and Fire and I get a bit of a buddy sense from them.

Personality-wise, there was no-one outstandingly off-putting. Ferus has an evil gleam in his eyes occasionally: not nasty, but I bet he gets up to mischief when he’s not on mission log. Auron seems quiet and calm. Sonn is serious with an impatient overtone. I found Eyse interesting: she smiled at me once, a nice wry smile. I guarantee she has a sense of humour. Halla I haven’t figured out. She had a bit of an edge, but not directed at me I think. Overall, although they were nowhere near as open and warm as First Squad, Fourth’s one of the easiest squads I’ve worked with. I think because they all treated me like a visiting consultant or something. Like I understood what was going on.

Nils from Second Squad showed up while we were still testing the elemental talents. I still haven’t decided how serious the thing is between Nils and Zee. Or what I think about Nils, who does a good impression of a walking sex-god. While the last of the elemental testing was going on he kept leaning down and telling me completely innocuous things in this incredibly husky voice, totally doing it to see if he could make me blush. I don’t think I’ll ever be gladder that Ruuel seems to think that one minute is the maximum time needed to master any new skill, and that he soon sent Nils over to one side to summon illusions for Fourth Squad to chase.

Having Ferus cart me about with Telekinesis is not at all the same as Ketzaren doing it, and I probably would have been more embarrassed about that if I wasn’t so relieved not to be at Nils' mercy any more. Ruuel took more time and was far more exacting about getting everyone used to working with me and the rotations of enhancement in combat, but he still decided we were ready to go into the Ena in under an hour. By then I wasn’t nervous about it. It was obvious they were as totally professional as First Squad, and that Ruuel hadn’t allotted himself enough time to study me for signs of awkward lust.

We kitted up at Red Lock. Getting ready to go into the Ena involves grabbing a little food and drink, a tiny med-kit, and one of the breathers in case of water-logged spaces. And going to the loo. I have no idea whether it’s considered a bad idea to go in the spaces, but given the mission log I’m sure everyone wants to avoid the need, so it’s part of the ritual of gearing up.

"We will be mapping the gates off the new High Forest space," Ruuel said, once everyone was ready. "Additionally, we will see whether Devlin’s enhancements will bring us any closer to relocating Columns, or a reliable path to Hasata. This is still a test situation. Do not push limits."

High Forest space is beautiful. Really. Tall, slender trunks, branches soaring far overhead, silvery leaves drifting down to form a shushing carpet. And, although I suppose someone might have killed them earlier, it doesn’t seem like it’s inhabited by any Ionoth. There’s a ton of gates leading off it, and I think the idea was supposed to be that we document where each of them led, but Auron, who is the strongest Path Sight talent in Fourth Squad, said he had a suspicion of a short line to Unara, and so we went off through a very low gate onto a rocky path winding up a hill (my aching legs!). Just like with First Squad, Ruuel and Sonn go through the gate first as a pair, and the rest of us can’t go through until they’ve signalled us. With the hill space, Ruuel signalled us through straight away. There were things there a lot like wargs, six of them in all, and they looked strong, but they weren’t nearly fast enough. Fourth Squad seems to prefer using close-combat methods.

After Auron found the next gate he was looking for, Fourth paused to survey the hill space and the other gates leading out of it, and Sonn used Ena Manipulation to ensure the gate we’d passed through and the one we were going to pass through were absolutely solid. The next space was a cliff-top beside an angry ocean, and full of weather, grey and pounding wet. That was a quick signal through and then a slog through damp bushes. There were Ionoth there, misty grey horses which ran off as we approached, but though Fourth Squad were very alert, there was nothing that they seemed inclined to slaughter.

The gate Auron took us to was a new type for me. It was as vague and unreal as the horses and you couldn’t really see through it, except in occasional flickers showing the outline of buildings.

"Phasic," Auron said. "I’ve never managed to track through one before." And he gave me this solemn sort of nod which was more successful at making me go red than all Nils' teasing.

Then it was Sonn’s turn, enhancing and frowning at the gate. Phasic gates aren’t steadily aligned, and thus are only open in short bursts. Sonn frowned at it for a short age, nearly collapsing in the process, but looked pleased with herself when she was rewarded with a clear view into Unara’s near-space. Ruuel had Ferus pair with him to go through since Sonn was so clearly drained, and then signalled us through again, out of the downpour.

Leaving Sonn and Auron guarding me, the other four went hunting, tracking down a number of Ionoth in the area. I stood about and dripped and tried to picture the people who owned the apartment we were standing in.

When they were back, Ruuel checked the status of the gate once again, then said: "We’ll retrace now. A good result." I swear, he talks like he’s being charged a dollar a word. But that judicious dollop of approval succeeded in making his whole squad, even me, stand a little straighter.

At least, with Fourth Squad being dauntingly competent, I didn’t have a lot of time to fret about crushes. Other than sending me off to medical afterwards, Ruuel failed to do anything to either make me dislike him or fall at his feet, and I ended up focused on business. I really did like when he said it was a good result, though.

Friday, March 14

Planning an outing

Today while I was swimming I was brought into a meeting channel by Isten Notra. "Just listen," said her invitation text, so that’s what I did, floating slowly about the pool.

There were about twenty people in the channel, most of them people I’d never even seen their names before. But also Maze, Ruuel, Taarel and Selkie.

Someone had been speaking when I joined, but stopped abruptly and said: "Notra–" in a protesting tone.

"Since our young ally’s contribution will be central to this venture, it’s best to keep her abreast of the issues, don’t you agree, Minera?" Isten Notra said, sounding like she was having fun. "Do you wish to speak further, or shall we move on to the question of numbers?"

"Sentimentality mixes badly with survival, Notra," said the one called Minera, but then shut up.

"It can only be a large force," someone else said. "When small forces have been attacked, they’ve been destroyed completely. Larger contingents are rarely without survivors."

The meeting went on for ages, and I’m too tired to write even a tenth of it. They were planning an expedition to Muina to investigate the aether-making, and were trying to work out a way to do it without everyone, particularly me, dying. Especially since one of the things they wanted to investigate was why the aether/Muina/whatever doesn’t hate me. Eventually they decided on four squads – risking both of the exploration squads, which was another argument in itself – with only a small contingent of greensuits. From a few of Selkie’s comments, he thought it likely the Setari would end up protecting the greensuits rather than the other way around.

After I’d told them about the aether they had sent a lightning-quick expedition of greysuits and greensuits to set out a few scanning drones at my village, very carefully timed to try and avoid them all being destroyed, and won themselves lots of nice footage and readings of a moonfall, which were transmitted through today. Now that the Setari have nearly stabilised the situation with Tare’s neighbouring spaces, KOTIS is planning the first extended expedition to Muina in years, with a day-trip excursion in three days, and then another two days before the next moonfall. They’re also searching their satellite scans for any other settlements which have the same circle patterns on the roofs, and have found one already.

When they were done, Isten Notra asked me on a private channel why I hadn’t provided her with any comments on the reports and when I explained that I hadn’t found anything to say told me to always keep the question in mind, and to not be backward in passing on observations during the upcoming expedition.

Afterwards I talked to Maze, but didn’t ask directly about what they’d been discussing before I’d been brought into the meeting. Isten Notra had shown me that they definitely were arguing about my irreplaceability, which I guess also means there’s not yet little copies of me growing in a vat somewhere. She was underlining a point, calling me an ally. I’m lucky she seems to have decided to defend me.

Or maybe Isten Notra just understands that I really would try to leave, no matter how dangerous my jaunts are, if I believed that’s what they were doing. Making Muina safe is a far bigger thing than me being able to increase the strength of a handful of Setari, and I’m willing to help however I can, but just me. Letting them make copies of me, or try to breed little amplifying tools, that would be a moral failure on my part.

That sounds ridiculous and weird. But I know it’s something I couldn’t put up with.

Saturday, March 15

Rain thoughts

The weather outside was finally calm enough that I could go up to the roof today after another morning of being zonked out with aether testing. Tare really is prone to horrible weather so it’s no wonder the Muinans arriving here had such a struggle: constant cyclone-level storms made surface-dwelling almost impossible. It was still windy and spattering occasional raindrops when I went up, but nothing so bad I couldn’t enjoy it.

I’d managed not to think particularly of Ruuel for the whole of yesterday, but I dreamed about him last night, and the rain reminded me of the dream, which had been of a moment during that session with Fourth. So easy to look up my log, to go back to a brief glance I’d taken of him while Sonn was working on the phasic gate. He was in profile to me, gazing out into the greyness – looking at one of the Ionoth horses – with the rain pouring down his face and his hands loose at his sides. Ungodly beautiful.

As crushes go, this one’s starting to verge on girly-obsession.

It’s really interesting comparing how I write about Ruuel now to the first few times I saw him. I didn’t mention his looks at all, except in passing, but it’s not like I didn’t notice what he looked like. Well, maybe back on Muina I didn’t, since the light wasn’t good and I was just so overwhelmed by the sheer fact that there were people. When I saw him and Taarel together, I thought them both very good-looking, but only really focused on her. He surely can’t be steadily getting prettier. Is it just that I like him more each time I see him, or wasn’t I paying proper attention before?

His eyes are his most dominant feature, dark and clearly drawn. His face is delicate around the temples, and he has a clean, not very heavy jaw line. Arched brows, better shaped than mine, which is unfair. He keeps his hair clipped short, shaped to his skull. A swimmer’s build, lean and not heavily muscled, with wide shoulders. I think I like his hands best. Last night was the second time I’ve dreamed about him, and both times have been about his hands in some way, about how careful he is not to touch things, and how precisely and sparingly he moves.

I think maybe I understand a little more why I’m stuck on someone who is really not my type, and who has barely spoken to me. Not just that he’s good-looking and dangerous, though I expect that helps. Not that he was professional during the testing session, or even that he crossed thirteen spaces to save my life. I think it’s because of the way he behaved when he caught up with me. He didn’t treat me as stupid, just told me what would happen if I tore a hole into Earth’s real-space, and let me make my choices about it. Nor did he tell me to hurry up, giving me the time to say goodbye. I don’t know if he was being considerate, or thought that the best way to handle my psychological aspects, but I appreciated it.

Once I’d had my fill of gazing at Ruuel-in-the-rain, I reviewed his report from that session. I quite like reading reports for the missions I’ve been on, though I avoid viewing the log extracts overmuch. It still seems too invasive to peer through someone else’s eyes, for all that it’s a fact of life for everyone here. After a lot of debate, I did play the hypocrite and access Ruuel’s attached log, skipping to that same scene and looking through his eyes at the Ionoth horses, trailing streams of invisible light which curled and plumed like an impossible mane behind them. All those Sights. Then I went back to the very beginning of the testing session, and saw that he’d started the mission log from just before I walked in the room. I watched for a few minutes, up until Nils arrived, and gave up at a point where Ruuel was looking at me. Nils was talking, bending toward me, and I was obviously squirming, giving him an irritated, amused glance, face red.

I looked very human. Not too bad, I guess, but…mortal. And writing that pisses me off. These people aren’t gods. Heroes, maybe. Asses, quite a few of them. Soldiers. Killers. Specialists.

And I’m a very useful stray. I have to remember that Ruuel was just as ready to call me stray as those idiots from Fifth and Seventh. I don’t even use his first name in a diary written in a language that only I understand because, well, he hasn’t given it to me to use. Even with First Squad – gods, Maze was in a meeting where they were discussing breeding me or something. So was Ruuel. Even if I can manage to learn this language enough to stop sounding ridiculous and they can better understand the kind of person I am, they have no choice but to always treat me as the useful stray above everything else, because that’s their job. On this planet I will always be more tool than person.

I’ve put off any attempt to cut and run until after they’ve had a chance to poke me at Muina and see what happens. It just wouldn’t be fair of me to go before that. But it’s Dad’s birthday soon. Easter’s coming up. Mother’s Day. I’ve been gone about four months. I think that meeting yesterday upset me more than I realised. I didn’t do anything at all today except sit on the roof. And this diary entry sounds like I’m bipolar.

I don’t know. I probably should have exercised, so I was too tired to think. It’s a pity First Squad is being kept so busy trying to get things back to normal. I miss the training schedule I had with Mara. I need the structure.

Sunday, March 16

Night Visitor

I woke up in the middle of the night because my chest was purring again. I was so glad. Even though it’s occurred to me that Ghost might be interested in me for exactly the same reason that the Tarens are, that for all I know I’m enhancing her the same way I do the Setari, I don’t care. She doesn’t mind if I talk to her in English. And I can hold her and play with her without feeling that she’s been assigned to me, or that she’s going to write a report about it after. She acts exactly like every other cat I’ve known, digging claws in inconveniently, chasing bits of paper and all. After a while she bored of me and went away, but I’m pretty sure she’ll be back.

Ghost made the rest of the day bearable. Hour upon hour of tests and scans, and the worst medical exams yet. Half-dressed and trying not to cry while a fresh set of greysuits took bone marrow and spinal fluid samples. They mightn’t have cloned me yet, but it won’t be for lack of material. The greysuits are still trying to figure out what made my interface start growing again, and searching for differences between me and Tarens. Pretty soon they’ll have a complete genetic map of me, but they still don’t understand why Muina likes me.

I spent the time between whimpering reading up on the cloning debate on Tare. They are really against it, because the clones invariably have shorter life-spans and are prone to sickness. And there’s a measurable downgrade of intelligence, too. After a day researching Taren morals and laws, I still can’t decide what they might do if the situation grows worse. Tarens don’t have any strong belief in a Creator-God, and are split between the idea of planet reverence, or pure scientific evolutionary theory. So they don’t have things like the Ten Commandments, of laws which have been handed down from God. Laws are either based on an idea that you must be grateful your planet makes it possible for you to exist, or on a fairly clinical construct of ethics in a functioning society. Funnily enough, most of the laws are very much the same as Earth’s, though there’s a real emphasis on personal responsibility. Social contracts. Doing what’s right for both yourself and for others.

I’m feeling all social contracted out at the moment. My arm and back won’t stop aching.

Monday, March 17

Too much aether

Aether sessions in the morning and then late in the afternoon, which meant I didn’t really have a day today and now don’t feel remotely tired. Which is great given that I’m supposed to go to Muina tomorrow. I’m going to go and swim a thousand laps in the hopes that I can get a few hours sleep afterwards.

Stupid greysuits.

Wednesday, March 19

Loud

We weren’t scheduled to leave for Muina until nearly (my) midday. I’d not been sure if I could get any rest before we went, but had abruptly fallen asleep a little before I would usually have had breakfast. I’d set my alarm for a half hour before I was supposed to meet up, but it was maybe an hour before that when Zee sent me an override channel request. The interface tells people if you’re asleep, and so when you send them an override, you’re deliberately waking them up. I don’t remember this conversation at all, but reviewed it later from my ever-present internal log to confirm just how embarrassing it was.

I answered with "Nnngh?"

There was this long pause, then Zee said: "Caszandra? Are you ill?"

"Tired," I said. "Your medics are all sadists." Since I was speaking in English, that was meaningless to her, but I helpfully added in Taren: "Too much profanity aether." Using the Taren word for profanity – I still don’t know suitable Taren swear words.

The even longer pause after this gave me an opportunity to fall most of the ways back to sleep, and when she did speak, asking if I thought I needed to go to medical I didn’t respond until she repeated herself. And then with more unhelpful English: "No more fucking tests." But then I woke up a bit more and managed to stick to Taren to say: "Sorry, tired. Is leaving earlier or something?"

"No, we were just going to take you over the ship beforehand, but that can keep. I’ll send someone with breakfast for you a zelkasse before we’re due out. Go back to sleep."

I seem to have said: "Margle margle," back at her, and have no idea what I was trying to say. When my alarm went off I didn’t feel much better, but stumbled into the shower and put it on full-force icy, and was trying to do something with my hair when Lohn and Mara showed up with soup and chewy black bread and a hot, sweet milky drink.

"Nice circles," Lohn said, flicking my cheek. "There’s plenty of time to get to the hanger, so don’t feel rushed."

"How long flight Muina?"

"Nearly a kasse, if you take into account all the pre-flight fussing and actually getting to the gate and deep-space, and then we have perhaps another kasse getting from the gate point to your village. Maze was planning to use the time for a briefing, but I suspect he’d rather you slept than listened at this point. He’ll email you an outline." Lohn grinned, stretching himself out on one of my couches. "I wish I could hear whatever he’s saying to Research."

"Three different teams were working with you, two specifically on the aether effect," Mara said. "It had become something of a competition between them. And since Muina expeditions are considered so dangerous, they appear to have felt they should do as much as they could in case they didn’t have a chance to test you further."

At that point I only had a vague impression that I’d somehow been swearing at Zee, and asked: "Has First Squad been Muina before?" while I looked back at whatever I’d been saying to her.

"Just once. Even though the Setari have a far better chance of survival than any of the previous expeditions, at the same time we’ve been considered too valuable to risk. Knowing about the presence of aether is a major step toward understanding at least a few of our losses." Mara shook her head. "It’s still a gamble though, and since half the reason we’re going is to observe how the planet reacts to you, it really would help if you were more than barely conscious. There’ll be some revision of how you’re assigned in future to inject some continuity and common sense."

"Don’t know why tired," I said. "Sleep all yesterday, should be too awake now." But everything seemed a lot of effort, including trying to speak in the wrong language, so I concentrated on eating and then trying to get my hair less tangled. Lohn chattered along blithely, but I can see in retrospect that he was watching me closely.

We headed down in plenty of time, arriving maybe twenty minutes before the marked boarding time, but I wasn’t the least surprised to see a lot of people already there, if not yet on board. Parts of Third, Fourth and Seventh Squad, for once not all standing apart in their own little groups. The ship was either the same or very similar to the one I’d first seen on Muina, with a big boarding ramp lowered, and a bunch of greensuits fussing about.

Eeli from Third bounced over as soon as she saw me, ecstatically happy and enthused about the excursion. I really wasn’t equal to dealing with her, the stream of comment and questions washing over me as just noise, and it was only when she paused and Mara said "I’d like to hear that too," that I had any chance of catching up. She’d been fascinated by what I’d said in the Pillar and wanted to hear the rest of the poem.

"After mission?" I offered. "Will try work out translation."

Eeli mainly wanted to hear it in English, apparently, because she wanted to feel it with Symbol Sight, but was satisfied with a promise to recite it on the trip back. Given I was having trouble remembering my own name, multi-stanza poetry in any language just wasn’t going to happen. But Lohn and Mara rescued me from further enthusiasm and took me onto the ship, which was called the Litara, only to deliver me up as a sacrifice to Ista Tremmar.

I don’t mind Ista Tremmar. She’s pretty strict, but nice enough, and not one of the people who had been doing experiments on me. Not lately anyway. She gave me a quick, thorough exam, asking lots of questions about how much I’d been sleeping and when, and what I’d been eating and doing and whether I dreamed after passing out during the aether experiments or felt strange or bothered on days when there wasn’t aether experiments.

When Maze arrived I was saying, maybe a bit shortly, that no I didn’t think I was addicted to aether.

"Not for want of opportunity it seems," he said. "What’s your verdict, Ista?"

"Beyond straightforward exhaustion, and perhaps some mild anaemia, I’ve found nothing of note. The best I can suggest from Harl and Luar’s early results, is that the aether is acting as a stimulant." She turned back to me. "When you lose consciousness under the influence of the aether, your brain activity monitor doesn’t show any of the patterns of sleep. Better considered a type of paralysis, perhaps, and though I don’t see any record of an energy expenditure analysis being performed, I’d be willing to bet it’s more than an at rest state. In the previous tests, you’ve had the rest of the day for the aether to wear off, and have slept normally. Yesterday would have represented a massive overdose of stimulant, on top of several days of steady exposure. Your system, although not apparently negatively effected by aether, needed to rid itself of the aether’s effect before you could sleep, and then of course you crashed quite severely." She switched back to Maze. "I don’t see any reason not to go ahead. I’ll re-examine her after she’s rested, but consider her cleared for duty."

"And even on schedule," Maze said and when Ista Tremmar left looked at me a long moment, then said: "This won’t be allowed to happen again, but I will ask that you speak to one of us if you’re being pushed unreasonably." He didn’t give me a chance to respond, just started walking, gesturing for me to follow. "The only thing I had meant to check, before this happened, was to confirm that you had seen an entrance below the central amphitheatre, but hadn’t ventured into it."

"Too dark," I said, shrugging.

"Did you have any sense of threat from it, or the amphitheatre in particular?"

"Amphitheatre where all cats live," I said, pausing in the entrance of a room with the tiered pod-seat things I remembered from my first trip. First and Third Squad were sitting about sideways on the seats with the covers up. "Super feral unfriendly cats. Don’t have to worry about petting them."

"I know," Maze said, and gave me one of his awesome smiles. "You won’t make the same mistake twice. Get some rest now."

There were only the two chairs still empty, in the corner on our left. I picked the upper tier one, smiling at Zee across the way, and then squirming as the chair began moulding itself around me. I was too tired to care much about anything else, not even that Taarel was watching from the opposite corner. Maze closed the cover of my seat as soon as I lay down, and I pretty much passed out instantly.

Zee woke me up with another override channel request. "Human yet?"

"Maybe half." I started to sit up and almost whacked my head on the seat cover, then finished the movement as Zee opened it.

"Back to medical. I know you’re looking forward to that."

"Zee’s turn be comedian." I did feel better, though. Groggy, but no longer like I was being sucked down into a black pit. Ista Tremmar looked me over, told me I had to eat a high-energy, high-protein diet until further notice, and pointed the way to the nearest bathroom. Washing my face helped, and Zee nodded approval when I came out.

"Next stop, a little food. We’ll be landing in about twelve joden. Read Maze’s mission outline first, and let me know if you have any questions."

There’s a hundred joden in a kasse, so that was a little over twenty minutes. I just nodded. I was feeling placid, really wanting another day or two of sleep, but willing to go along with whatever was asked of me so long as it didn’t require too much thought. I read Maze’s email, and Zee’s from early that morning about taking a tour of the ship. It really is a big ship, with all those little pods used when travelling through the gate, enough to cover a sizeable greensuit and greysuit complement. There’s the infirmary and a kitchen and canteen and laboratories and assembly areas.

The mission was pretty basic. All four squads would go ashore in my town, split into two groups and do an initial reconnoitre and check the drones. I would be with First and Third Squad, answering any questions it occurred to them to ask me, and their Sight talents would be paying a lot of attention to whether there was an unusual reaction from the places around me.

They were very interested in the amphitheatre, but also wary of it since the aether had drained there, so it would be part two of the outing. We’d all meet up there and poke our nose cautiously underneath and see whether anything bit it off. In other words, the mission outline was "wander around looking for anything interesting, try not to get killed".

Four squads makes for a lot of people in the mission channel, along with two non-Setari people staying on the Litara, whose names were Kensan and Tehara. And me. Greensuits ferried us ashore using the hovering sled things before returning to the ship, and I wondered vaguely why they didn’t leave any for us to escape with as I followed Ketzaren off onto the rocky bank.

It was the same spot I’d been picked up from – it seemed like an eternity ago – and since Sonn was standing right next to me I caught her eye and said: "Full circle," but though I think she understood what I meant she was being all serious and didn’t respond.

Ferus, though, was a different kettle of fish. "What was it you were cooking here?" he asked, nodding at the faint remains of my fires and the three massive flat bowls. "I’ve often wondered if you could possibly eat that much."

"Boiling wool," I said, shrugging. "Clean it, make blanket." Come to think of it, I don’t think I actually cooked anything the entire time I was on Muina. I never managed to catch any fish, or find any eggs. Survivor Cass was barely making a passing grade.

It was colder than it had been when I’d been living there. Autumn-ish, with a sharp wind blowing over the lake which made me gladder than ever that I’d been rescued. If the town has a proper European-type Winter, I would not only have needed a whole lot more wool, I’d be facing some real food challenges.

I’ve written all of this entry so far without mentioning Ruuel, mainly because I hadn’t seen much of him. But he was just a little way down the shore from me then, and said: "No sense of threat," and sometimes I wonder if he goes around deliberately striking dramatic poses, because whenever I let myself look at him he seems to be being particularly photogenic. Though I guess gazing intently into the distance is part of his job description.

"We’ll take the half to the left," Maze said. "Be vocal."

I was glad the squads were divided the way they had been. Not so much for controlling my urge to gaze at Ruuel, since I’m more or less managing that, but because that shot Forel from Seventh Squad had taken at Zan was a good way to get me to distrust her totally. Other than looking even more cat-that-got-the-cream than usual, she was being very correct, but I was happy to be with First Squad and Third Squad.

Particularly because Eeli was very fun to watch, so overjoyed at her first time on Muina that she practically vibrated. Occasionally a little comment would burble out, but mostly she was just eyes everywhere. Once, Taarel touched her shoulder and gave her a little smile and she settled down a bit. We walked about the town, not seeing anything other than small abandoned town. Sefen, Third’s strongest Place Sight talent, could see only a faint after-image of aether, just a haziness.

I spent the time reminiscing, working on a translation of "Do Not Go Gentle" for later, and wondering if Ruuel was annoyed with himself for not having seen anything significant about this town when they chased the Ddura here.

Maze’s be vocal apparently meant to communicate a lot as we explored, but I only heard Forel, Auron and Halla say anything from the other group. Eventually Maze told everyone to return to the shore to collect the new drones they’d left there, and head toward the amphitheatre.

The drone left by greensuits before the last moonfall had exploded. They’d been expecting this, since it wasn’t transmitting, but spent a small age doing examinations and taking readings and putting another drone in its place. I watched the cats, which had all retreated to the far side of the amphitheatre and were watching us back, tremendously annoyed.

While Third Squad messed with the remains of the drone, Fourth and Seventh Squad took me down to examine the extra-big central circle. Even enhanced, none of them could make out anything more from it than an after-image of the aether. Having me stand in the middle made no difference.

"Should we clear these animals out?" Tsennan asked.

At the time I just thought he was a gung-ho idiot, and only glanced at him as Sonn straightforwardly said: "No threat." It’s only thanks to my ever-present log that a later review gave me a peripheral view of Forel shifting to watch me beforehand. They were seeing if they could get a rise out of me because of Ghost. My log also showed Ruuel turn his head in Forel’s direction, but he didn’t react otherwise. Still, if I was her I wouldn’t play petty games in front of Sight talents. Particularly since she seems pretty keen on making herself look good in front of that particular Sight talent.

The four squad captains on this trip were a soap opera in the making. Forel seems to want to impress Ruuel. Ruuel, well, I don’t know for sure, but he seems to spend an awful lot of time with Taarel. I’m trying to pretend that doesn’t really mean anything. Taarel, at least that one time while we were out in the city, seems intense about Maze. And Maze isn’t playing romance any more.

Not having seen this at the time, I just shrugged off the whole thing and went back to thinking about poetry translations and the embarrassment involved in walking around my town with an escort of twenty-four psychic space ninjas who all seemed to think far more was going to happen than I did. I can’t say I ever held great expectations for the outing, given that I’d lived there for a month, and the Setari had already gone over the place, if only casually. I wasn’t the least surprised when we all went down underneath the amphitheatre and found no monsters, just a short white corridor which curved down to an empty circular room with a round, thigh-high platform in the middle. I was pondering the less-than-fun prospect of returning to do this again, except with me probably having to get drunk on aether again, when Sefen from Third looked across at Ruuel and said: "I don’t even begin to understand what I’m seeing here."

"It feels like a gate," Taarel said. "But–"

"No, not a gate." Ruuel moved to my left and touched my arm, frowning. "Far more complex. The Ena is tangible here."

Maze, who had been toting one of the replacement drones about with Telekinesis, lowered it to the ground by the outer wall. "We did expect to find an outlet for the aether, after all." He checked that the drone was stable and turned it on, verifying with the Litara that the ship was receiving the drone’s transmission. "If it’s some sort of device in addition to that, what’s your evaluation of function?"

There was a bit of shifting about, as the rest of the Place and Symbol Sight talents took the opportunity to enhance themselves and view the platform from different angles. Maze was running scans with the drone. To me it looked like nothing more than a platform: there were even steps up one side.

"Communication," Ruuel said eventually, and there were a few hesitant nods of agreement.

"Getting an aether reading from it," Maze commented, then said over the interface: "Orders?"

The bluesuit in charge, Tehara, said: "Take contact readings, but no more until we return. Analysis of the scans taken in the interim may give us a better idea of how to approach it."

Between them the two Sight squads had four Place Sight talents. "Go unenhanced, Sefen," Taarel said. "We’re still not entirely certain if there is any distortion in play for enhanced Sights."

He nodded while the other three – Ruuel, Halla and Marana – made their gloves flow back into the sleeves of their suits. Place Sight talents often go about fully gloved, since touching an object can give them a deeper reading, like when Ruuel was handling my diary back in medical. I’ve seen enough of The Hidden War now to know that Place Sight talents have a great deal of difficulty with the information they can sense, and avoid accidentally touching people and objects. The actor on the show is always being fraught and sensitive and locked down.

Marana, a short but muscular girl from Third Squad, was first to try, but drew her hand back immediately. "Aether effect," she said, frowning.

Halla and Ruuel both tried, but you could see it was hurting them just pressing their fingers lightly against the stone surface and they quickly stopped.

"Try nullifying the negative effects with Devlin while reading," Taarel suggested, but then she – everyone with Combat Sight – went on alert, saying: "Threat," out loud.

Most of them stepped back away from the platform, creating the nanoliquid blades from their suits. I stepped back as well, aware of Ketzaren and Alay shifting to flank me, and then covered my ears at the sound which followed. Whale song has nothing on it.

"Approaching rapidly," Maze said, fortunately in a pause in the noise. "Overwhelming threat. Get Devlin out of here."

Ketzaren started to move, but Ruuel was faster. He didn’t have time to be careful, just grabbed my wrist and yanked me forward, pressing my hand down on the platform. The noise changed, just as loud, but a different pitch, and everyone reacted as if they’d missed being bitten by a shark. Ruuel said something, eyes gone all narrow and extra-black, and I didn’t even try and raise my voice to respond, saying: "Can’t hear you over Ddura," even as I realised that I was the only one acting like I’d been trapped in a belltower at the wrong moment.

"It’s a communication device," came in text through the interface. "Communicate."

The logs attached to the mission report have twenty different views of the look I gave him in response. An "Are you high?" caption would fit it well. I was actually thinking "In whale song?" But what was I going to do? Say no? Especially since everyone was acting as if the shark was circling for another run.

Being suddenly expected to do something instead of standing around was disconcerting to the max. I bought some time closing my eyes and trying to sort out what I was hearing. The Ddura noise was so drawn out and huge it was hard to encompass it. But I was sure it wasn’t words, not anything I had a chance of recognising. It was repeating the same long hhhhuuuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaa over and over. It felt like a question. The Ddura had stopped attacking when I touched the platform and was asking me something. So I tried to guess what an artificially created aurora cloud built to kill monsters would ask someone who showed up and tried to talk to it.

As always it sounded sad, mournful. I had no idea if it really was, or if it that was its noise for growling boisterously, but the idea led to one obvious possibility: everyone on the planet had left. If I thought of it as a big (huge-mungous) dog which had been bred to protect the Muinans, and then abandoned, then it would be all where is everyone, what should I do, I’m so lonely, please love me. Sheer guesswork, but treating it like a dog was the only thing I could think of in the middle of all that noise.

Since the noise was apparently in my head, I didn’t bother trying to speak, just started thinking over and over: "Shut up! Shut up! Be quiet! Shut up! Quiet! Quiet!"

To my eternal surprise it tapered off, making a brief eager hhhhhaaaaaaa sound. "Good Ddura," I thought, feeling mildly idiotic. "Good Ddura. Be quiet. Good Ddura."

I opened my eyes, trying to think while my head recovered from its noise-pounding, and looking across at the Setari on the far side of the platform, who were watching me intently. Immediately the Ddura made a hhhhiiiiiiiiiiii noise, not nearly so loud, but all anxious and fretful and then, "mmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn".

"Threat rising," Maze said, tersely.

"Stop!" I thought. "Down. Friends! Friends!"

It made the hhhiiiiiiiii noise again. It wanted to protect me, I think. And that was the problem: it didn’t recognise the Tarens, it thought they were the enemy the same way the aether did. And it’s pretty hard to convince a dog that the scary strangers all poised to attack are friends.

Keeping my right hand on the platform, I reached to the left. Ruuel had let go of me – I later found some nice bruises where he’d grabbed me – so I took his wrist and pressed his hand to the platform, keeping hold the same way I had Selkie during my aether testing. "Friend," I thought, then carefully let go of Ruuel, watching him wince as the aether in the platform immediately began reacting to him.

"Friend," I thought, but was getting the hhhiiii noise again. "Friend," I repeated, putting a lot of command into it. "This is a Muinan. He belongs here. This is his home. He belongs."

I felt something, not from the Ddura, but the platform itself seemed to go icy and slick beneath my hand and then settle down. Ruuel straightened, eyes opening very wide, and he said: "It’s not reject–" but then the Ddura started going "Hhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!! Hhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!! Hhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!" so loudly I swear every blood vessel in my head considered popping. Ruuel didn’t act like he could hear it, but he had both hands pressed to the platform and was talking, eyes still all wide and surprised.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up!" I thought over and over at the Ddura and it quieted down a little, but kept going hhhhhaaaaaaa! in this mountainous burble. A lot happier about Ruuel than it had been me.

"Everyone put hand," I said out loud, not even able to hear myself speak. One thing about Setari discipline is they’re quick to obey a command. According to the logs, Maze said: "Do it," and everyone did, despite the pain it caused.

"These are Muinans," I thought, to the Ddura or the platform or both. "They belong here. This is their home. They belong."

The Ddura exploded into hysteria – it really did behave a lot like an abandoned dog – and I had to resort to this kind of mental shriek in return: "SHUT UP!!!!" which startled it into pausing. "Bad Ddura. Be quiet. Be quiet. Good Ddura. Yes. Quiet. Okay. Good Ddura, you can protect the Muinans, can’t you? That’s a good Ddura. Protect the Muinans." I paused, then looked over at the drone on the far side of the room. "These drones belong to the Muinans. Protect the drones. Good Ddura." I tried mentally picturing the Litara as well, but my head was pounding like anything, so have no idea if it was any use going on about: "This is a Muinan ship. Protect the ships. Good Ddura."

It started doing the hhhhhaaaaaaa thing again, far more interested in the Setari it could sense touching the platform than anything I was saying to it, so I sighed and gave up, rubbing my temples instead.

Ketzaren took my arm. "Do you need to sit down?"

"Need Ddura shut up. So loud."

It seemed that I was still the only one who could hear it, which I considered very unfair. A lot of the Setari were looking shell-shocked, fingering the platform cautiously. Eeli was crying in a happy, overwhelmed kind of way.

"First, return Devlin to the Litara," said Hara. "Third, Fourth, Seventh, finish your contact readings and then return."

I didn’t need any encouragement, coming close to dragging Ketzaren out of the room. Back in the amphitheatre, the only thing I noticed was that the cats had all gone. First moved into formation around me, though Ketzaren stayed letting me lean on her. I wasn’t in a falling-down state, but my head was pounding so incredibly that it was hard to concentrate on where I was walking. I ignored everything they said to me, since the Ddura was still enormously loud all the way through the town, calming down only a little. The greensuits were waiting for us and of course I was taken straight back to medical, but for once I didn’t care because I really wanted some painkillers. I’d dropped out of the mission channel as soon as I was on the sled, and really wanted quiet and dark.

"I’m accessing your log, Caszandra," Maze said, while Ista Tremmar unkindly made me sit through a scan before even thinking about giving me drugs. I watched his face, and was meanly pleased to see him start and grimace.

"Loud," I said. I could still hear the damn thing, all the way out on the lake, but fortunately fairly dimmed by then. He nodded but didn’t respond, watching the log presumably with the sound lowered while Ista Tremmar finished her scan and finally consented to fill me up to the eyeballs with painkillers. She said I could go so long as I drank a lot of liquid and lay down, which was exactly what I wanted to do. Maze, face all abstract, led me back to the canteen, and I found the rest of First Squad waiting, a meal already set out, though they were only picking at theirs. I think they were listening to my log as well, from the way they kept almost-wincing. My thoughts weren’t recorded, so it was all Ddura-noise.

"Can you describe what happened from your point of view?" Maze asked, while I drank down a lot of cold, tingly drink.

"Ddura thought you were Ionoth, think," I said, wishing the painkillers would work quicker. "Didn’t understand what it was saying, but guess from tone of noises. It like big pet, missing Muinans, kill anything it not recognise. I try tell Ddura that Ruuel was a Muinan, and the platform did something, and then the Ddura realise Ruuel not an Ionoth and get all happy. And even louder. Is Ddura thing been making ships explode?"

"That’s been brought up as a possibility in the past." Maze shook his head. "It was certainly approaching with intent to kill. When you touched the platform, it withheld the attack, but was still clearly hostile to us. And then very strongly the opposite. The Place Sights could feel something of its emotions through the platform, once it stopped reacting against them."

"It knew I not Muinan," I said, thoughtfully. "Much happier about Setari, once stopped thinking you Ionoth. But it was platform which changed way reacted to you."

"Ruuel is using an analogy of security clearance. The device allowed you, who for some reason have clearance, to identify us to the system."

"Our turn to have aether tests now," Lohn said. He had his arm around Mara, which was the first time I’d seen them publicly behave like a couple. I think everyone was pretty overwhelmed.

"My turn laugh when Lohn say silly things." I smiled, then sighed and rubbed my temple. "I try tell it that should protect drones and ships and things, but don’t think it listen. Too busy being happy. What happen next?"

Maze lifted one shoulder. "We exceeded the mission brief by an order of magnitude. The result is very good, but completely beyond what we were expecting or had planned for. I don’t know if it will delay or bring forward the proposed second trip."

"What happens next is you catch up on your rest," Zee said, squeezing my shoulder. "This is a large development, but in the short term there’s a two kasse journey back to base. And then at minimum a day of argument, tests and analysis."

"Still huge changes," Lohn said. "We mightn’t have solved the overall problem, but our progress on Muina has been entirely stifled by this…security clearance issue."

"The Ddura doesn’t explain all of the deaths," Alay pointed out.

"But most of them," Ketzaren said. "Almost certainly most of them, if it’s what has been causing ships to explode. Even massives are minor compared to that, particularly when KOTIS can use weaponry without risk to structures. My guess is that there’ll be an attempt to establish a serious foothold around this town of yours. And from there we’ll search for information about the Muinans of the past, and the way the Pillars were constructed."

"One thing Lantaren not know but," I said. "How their security clearance wiped? They understood all that, they made Ddura. They supposed to be more powerful psychic than Setari. And it kill them. What happen, built settlement here, then security clearance wipe again?"

"Very good point." Maze had been playing with his food, and I was willing to bet he’d been thinking over the same possibility. "I certainly won’t be recommending any rush."

"Could Setari fight Ddura?"

"Not a chance." Zee glanced at Maze, then repeated. "Not a chance."

"It’s the first time we’ve been close enough to one to get some estimate of what level we’d face," Maze said. "It’s a massive made from pure energy which, it seems, can attack in real-space from near-space. I am very glad not to have had to try. And on that note, go lie down. I don’t want to see you again until you’ve stopped looking like you’ve been stepped on."

Zee came with me, waiting while I hit the bathroom and then seeing me settled back in my chair-pod.

"You’re upset about something," she said, one hand on the pod’s lid. "More than just the headache."

"Didn’t want become more important," I said. If I’m the only one who can give people security clearance, no-one here will ever be willing to let me leave.

Zee gave me an unexpectedly amused look. "I thought it was something like that. Just consider the alternative, if you hadn’t been able to stop it." She gestured for me to lie down, adding: "You can make the cover opaque, if the light bothers you. Get some sleep."

It was a fair point. We would have all died. Zee definitely knows how to quash signs of self-pity.

I figured out how to make the cover opaque, but dozed more than slept until after we’d taken off because the Ddura just wouldn’t shut up, though it calmed down a lot. Even worse would have been if everyone had died except for me. I don’t know if I would have been able to cope with that. As it is, I’m not sure that I can cope with what I did totally by accident. Every time I try and think through the consequences of that security clearance my mind runs away.

I must have needed more sleep than I realised, since when Zee woke me up again we were back on Tare. And then it was more scans in medical, and a long attempt to describe exactly what I’d done and thought after I touched the platform. My sleep patterns are totally messed up, but until I have something scheduled, I guess it doesn’t matter what shift I’m awake during. Other than the medical scans, I’ve stayed in my room, just writing and trying not to think of everyone dropping dead in front of me because it hadn’t occurred to me to try touching the platform.

Change

Mara came by to tell me the results of the scans on the Setari who were on the Muina mission. Aether has the same effect on them now that it does on me. Just those four squads, though. It still attacks anyone who doesn’t have security clearance.

"How are big arguments going?"

"Lively. I doubt they’ll change the scheduling of the next mission, but there’s a good chance they’ll alter the numbers. It’s all very well to talk of taking things slowly, but whoever says that also fully expects that they’ll be included." She pulled a face. "And that’s only in KOTIS. It will be impossible to keep this from going public for long, and then we’ll be factoring in a thousand special interest groups and the media. Muina is such an emotive issue."

"Can’t imagine Tarens actually living Muina. Never go outside."

"A huge adjustment," she agreed, kicking me lightly for the teasing. "Though I agree that some of those insisting on joining the next mission are going to find all that horizon a challenge. The Setari have the benefit of environment training, but other parts of KOTIS aren’t nearly so prepared."

"Looked like the leaves were turning. Will be very pretty."

She didn’t know what I meant, and we spoke for a while about Autumn and Winter – Tare doesn’t seem to have seasons beyond stormy and really stormy – and then about the potential pressure on the Setari of trying to work on two different planets. All of the squads which went to Muina yesterday are on rotation tomorrow, and the next day is the start of the extended mission. Mara warned me that while Third and/or Fourth will certainly be sent, they’re likely to use other squads to support them.

"Taarel and Ruuel are both people you can be confident with. If something happens that worries you or makes you uncomfortable, overcome this tendency to keep it to yourself. Object if there’s things you don’t want to do."

At that particular moment I was watching Ghost walk across the room behind Mara, and hoping she didn’t turn around. I wonder what she made of my expression.

"Will object if think will make difference," I said, reasonably enough. I didn’t want to have a needle in my spine, after all, but was sure that if I’d objected it would have meant being stuck in medical even longer until someone came and explained to me that it was important. "Would you live on Muina, if able?"

She didn’t answer immediately, then shrugged. "I find it very hard to picture being able to. But it’s certainly nice to know it might one day be an option."

Thursday, March 20

Interlude

Today I finally tracked down a place where I could buy a new diary: paper products do exist on this world, they’re just rare. It was amazingly expensive, and won’t be delivered before I leave for Muina tomorrow, but I think I’ve enough book left to last. I’m taking this one with me, since we’re packing for an extended stay. I’m bringing my old school backpack, which amuses me a lot.

They’ve assigned the squads: Second, Third, Fourth and Eighth. So no new squads, and none of the ones I really don’t feel comfortable with. I wish First was going though. Who am I going to chat with?

What happens this trip is incredibly important to me. I really need for it to be possible for someone else to give people security clearance.

Friday, March 21

Poetry, Death

I succeeded in being well-rested and on time for today’s mission. It’s scheduled to last three days and we’re currently about to go through the big gate into deep-space. Eeli took care of any initial uncertainty I had by glomming on to me the second I showed up and taking me on a tour of the Litara, though by this time the only areas I hadn’t seen were the flight deck, the research labs, and the airport lounge meeting areas.

There was still some time before take-off by the time she brought me back to the pods, but most of Second and Third Squad were already sitting waiting. You have to stay in your pod for take-off and landing, and when you go through the gate to deep-space.

"Are you able to tell me the rest of the poem now?" Eeli asked, as soon as I’d sat sideways on my seat. I could have wished she’d not waited till we had an audience, but at least it was only two squads.

"Guess. Is poem written by man name Dylan Thomas. Wrote for his father who was dying." I felt marvellously uncomfortable, adding: "My voice really not suited to this," but making an effort to put some feeling into it. I only know the poem because it was one of the few that we’d had to read in Eng-lit which I didn’t outright hate. I certainly don’t go round reciting at the drop of a hat.

I got through it by looking only at Eeli, but my face felt very red at the end. "That what wanted?" I asked, feeling even worse when I looked around and saw that I had all the captains watching me from the far door, along with those who’d been in the room when I started.

Eeli was enthralled, and said: "You sounded totally different! Like a different person!"

Annoyed, I told her: "Can actually speak own language, after all."

"But what does it mean?" Nils from Second asked, watching from the pod directly opposite. "A part of that was what you said in the Pillar, right?"

"Yes. Translation very bad, sorry." I read off the translation I’d been working on, wishing the captains would go away. If that gets put in the mission report I’ll be extremely peeved.

"I got quite a lot of it!" Eeli said, excited. She cast a beaming look over at Taarel, like a kid who passed a hard test, then back at me. "Thank you for telling me the rest. It’s so sad and at the same time beautiful, isn’t it?"

I just smiled weakly at that, and was glad that the command came to prepare for launch. And I wrote this up while they did lots of prep-checks and then took off and now we’re heading toward the interplanetary gate which, for the first time in four trips, I might actually be awake for.

Today’s Assignment

The gate was dull. You can’t properly see it from real-space, and once you’re in deep-space there’s just whiteness.

It took maybe twenty-five minutes to reach the exit to Muina, and once we were through Grif – Grif Regan, the Second Squad captain – briefed us for the first part of the mission. Unsurprisingly this involves going back to my town, and the Setari taking me down to visit the communication platform. They’re going to see whether anyone but me can give people security clearance (I am hoping so hard) and then, whatever the case, they’re going to clear everyone on board, offload a heap of equipment and set up a camp just outside town, keeping anything explodable separate. Then the Litara is going to leave us here. After that the Setari are going to explore more, including in the near-space, while the greensuits guard the greysuits as they analyse everything they can get their hands on. There’s also a few non-KOTIS scientists of an archaeological extraction, brought in to begin the enormous task of recovering Muina’s history.

Of first importance is the Ddura, of course, and whether it can be made to not blow up equipment, or if equipment can be given security clearance.

I think I’ll need earplugs for the inside of my brain.

Saturday, March 22

Reprieve

The Ena manipulation talents can give people security clearance! I’m so happy. I didn’t even hide my relief when we were on mission, and Taarel gave me the same sort of smile she gives Eeli, which was both nice and a little annoying, since she treats Eeli like an over-eager kid.

The Ddura didn’t show up immediately, and we had finished clearing the ship’s crew and were working on all the people who were going to be left here for the mission, before my ear-drums were blasted. It was all hhhaaa and hhhhiiiii at the same time, because there were lots of people it recognised as Muinans and lots that it thought were Ionoth, and it came charging up in this huge hurry to kill all the evil non-Muinans threatening its precious people.

The Ddura is really kind of stupid.

I had to keep telling it to stop (sit!) over and over until everyone was given clearance. Then I had another shot at telling it not to make the things belonging to the Muinans explode, since all the drones from the last expedition had been exploded. Just picturing the drones and the ship didn’t seem to mean anything to it, even when I could get it to pay any attention to me, so we tried putting a new drone right on the platform and tried giving it security clearance and that may perhaps have worked, they’re not really sure. The Ddura stopped treating it as a threat, anyway, so we did that for all the drones and any other largish bits of equipment we could get into the room. Then it was time for me to go visit medical on the ship just before it left, since the best equipment was there, and then back to shore, all drugged up to rest on a cot in the temporary medical tent while they started the business of setting up camp. I waited to watch the ship leave before lying down.

And now it’s the middle of the night. Fortunately Grif had sent me a summary of the camp arrangements, or I would have had to go stumbling about looking for the portaloo tents. One of the greensuits on guard took pity on me and showed me how to get to the food which had been stored.

I’m going to try and go back to sleep now that I’ve written this. At least the Ddura shut up eventually. I don’t much like spending all my time in uniform, either.

Dawn

When I gave up on sleep this morning there was a mist rising off the lake in the pre-dawn dark. The camp has been set up south of town and it’s really impressive how much they’ve established in such a short time: mess hall, infirmary, sleeping tents, a central command, research and working areas. Lots of canvas, but they’d brought a vat of their nanite building materials along and some real buildings were starting to take shape. When the Tarens make camp, they don’t do things by halves.

There were lights on in the command tent. The person in charge of the expedition is someone called Tsaile Staben, who I may or may not have been introduced to during the extreme-headache phase of yesterday, and one of the research tents was bustling with people who were obviously used to a different shift.

There’s nearly a hundred people here. I had no idea the mission was that large. Now that everyone has been cleared by the platform, the Setari are support on this mission, not the main focus. The greensuits are taking care of camp security, with the Setari acting as a kind of advanced warning system thanks to Combat Sight. My role’s been reduced to trying to communicate with the Ddura, which is no problem right now since it seems that the Ddura has recovered from its excitement and gone away. Now that everyone has the same reaction to aether, I don’t even have to worry about tomorrow’s moonfall.

I was feeling oppressed and restless – I’d had way too much sleep – and decided to go down to the lake. There was a greensuit posted on the lakeside edge of the camp, but I got past her just by nodding as I walked by, like no-one would think of objecting to me going anywhere by myself. It’s not as if the lake was very far away: the guard would have been within sight. It was incredibly quiet, just a few birds starting to think about it maybe being dawn, and so long as I kept facing the lake it felt like I was alone.

Before too long a tiny clatter of rock warned me that wasn’t true and I turned my head to see the leg of a person standing on the rock behind me, and a hand in fingerless Setari gloves. And that was enough to know it was Ruuel. It amazes me that I can recognise him from his hands. Since Ruuel moves like a cat, I guess he must have made the noise deliberately, to prevent me from shrieking and leaping in the lake out of shock. Heh – I can’t help thinking what an epic fuss that would have made in the camp, though.

"Is there something further along the lake?" Ruuel asked, which was less of a lecture than I’d expected, but also warning that I’d been looking south a bit too speculatively. But then, who am I to overlook an opportunity when it walks up and presents itself to me?

"Show you if want," I said, looking up at him. "One of things I miss about here."

His eyes went that abstract way people get talking over the interface, and then he nodded. I was pretty surprised, and then doubtful since it didn’t seem likely I was going to be able to walk along the lake with Ruuel without obsessing over the fact that I was walking along the lake with Ruuel. But it didn’t really work out that way. I was super aware of him, of course, but it was a beautiful morning, cold and crisp, and barely light enough to see, so I had to concentrate on not breaking my ankle.

It was a twenty minute walk, and was just getting on for proper dawn by the time we arrived at a small, deep stream draining into the lake, about a third of the way to the river that I’d walked along originally. When we were in sight of it I murmured: "Have to be more quiet now," which was a fairly redundant thing to say to Ruuel.

I stopped at the cluster of rocks I’d used last time I was there, notable for the cairn of rocks I’d constructed on the tallest one, and made a sit down gesture at Ruuel. My goal was there, fortunately: I spotted them straight away and pointed and then just watched.

That’s going to be a memory I’ll keep forever, even without my log. Dawn, the water glinting ever brighter, the sky mixing pastels. Birds starting to call and sing as the mist dissipated. And the otters which live in that stream dancing in the water as they dug little crayfish out of the rocky bed. I only snuck a single look at Ruuel, and while I have no idea if he enjoyed any of that outing, he at least was watching the otters attentively. Maybe he was thinking of the best and most efficient ways to kill them.

And then the Litara showed up, which most effectively destroyed the mood. As spaceships go, I expect it’s relatively quiet, but it sure can freak out the wildlife.

"Are called otters, on Earth," I said, standing up. "What is range interface transmission, when not on Tare?"

"About five times further than this, when there’s a relay." He was watching the Litara rotating for a landing position out above the lake. "Without a relay, not quite this far."

We started walking back, not hurriedly, though the Litara was well ahead of what I’d thought was its scheduled return. I thought of quite a few things I felt like saying, but kept them to myself, and Ruuel disappeared with a nod when we got back to camp.

Spaceships are an even better wake-up call than shrieking Earthlings, so there were a ton of people up and about. I’m sitting in the mess hall writing this and eating an extended breakfast while I wait to find out what’s going on.

Construction Project

The Litara had returned early because the research techs wanted to try out a simulated security pass. So back to the platform. The Ddura turns up reliably once someone starts fooling with the platform, but must have been at a fair distance this time because it took a while. The techs got impatient with me for that, like I have any control over what the thing does.

What does the Ddura think I am? I can hear it and I guess it can hear me when I’m touching the platform, but it knows I’m not Muinan and when the Taren Muinans are around it’s just not that interested in what I’m saying. When it finally showed up this time, it reacted to the drone with the simulated security pass in a confused sort of way – anxious and uncertain but not hostile. It can tell there’s something not right about it, but the fake pass makes it familiar enough that it doesn’t attack. That made everyone happy, including me in a "I’d smile if my head stopped hurting" way. They’re still cautious, but they think this means that the Ddura probably won’t go exploding all the equipment, and they’ll be able to get new visitors to the platform without having to worry about the Ddura killing them on the way. They brought with them two small shuttle type aircraft and they’ve staked them out as bait. One has the fake pass and one doesn’t. They’re on the east side of town on the crests of two different hills, so everyone can enjoy the show if they explode.

I wish it meant I could go back to Tare (I nearly wrote home, and felt awful), but I’m stuck here at least until the end of the original mission, even though they’re probably not going to involve me in the moonfall. I wouldn’t mind so much, except they swapped out Second Squad for Fifth Squad.

I guess Kajal must be stable and not completely stupid if they made him a squad captain. Just because he’s a prick and treats Zan and me as if we shouldn’t exist doesn’t mean he’s not good at his job. He’s still doing the completely not acknowledging my presence thing, which suits me well enough, and it’s not really obvious since there’s so many people here.

Third and Fourth have been off most of the day exploring the near-space and surrounding spaces; a task made easy by the Ddura’s hunting. Fifth and Eighth are assigned to guard duty, split up in pairs around the entire camp, in case something shows up to attack. Fifth is on now and Eighth has night duty. Having Setari squads guarding in shifts seems a real waste of their abilities. You can sure as hell tell that’s what Kajal thinks, anyway.

Tomorrow night is moonfall, and they’re in a huge rush to set up before then. There’s nowhere good to hide away from all the activity. Before Third headed out Taarel mentioned that I shouldn’t leave the area of camp, so it doesn’t look like I’ll get away with another excursion. I spent the bulk of the day in the infirmary recovering from my Ddura headache and the afternoon sitting on a rock down at the shore wishing that if I’m not allowed to leave, everyone would be quieter. I’m not even allowed into the old town.

Cloudy today, but then windy. It’ll probably be clear for the moonfall tomorrow.

Sunday, March 23

Boom

One of the shuttles exploded last night.

The right one, fortunately, and I could hear the Ddura being all happy about it afterwards. Funny that people could be pleased that a perfectly good piece of equipment was destroyed. I was in the infirmary, having carefully hung around the medic’s tent in the evening looking tired and headachy until Ista Leema, the settlement’s main medical person, started running tests on me and kept me in for observation. I have an assigned bunk in with the Setari, which I didn’t mind when my neighbours were Second and Third Squad, but found less amusing when it involved Fifth Squad one row over. Even the prospect of perhaps seeing Ruuel asleep wasn’t enough to outweigh my dislike of Kajal.

I was reading when the shuttle went boom, and in a bit of a mood, so pretended to be asleep when I heard the noise in case they wanted me to go talk to the Ddura. Headaches are making me less than cooperative. I was thinking that it was useful to be able to read books with my eyes closed when I remembered that the interface would also show them I was awake, if they looked.

Oh well. Now that they’ve confirmed that the fake security clearance will work for their machines, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be sent back to Tare tomorrow. Less important again, thank everything. I can start thinking about cautious going home experiments without feeling guilty.

Male Posturing

Late afternoon, and everyone’s keyed up about the moonfall. It’s been a good day for me, since it didn’t involve a headache, just a couple of private attempts to see if I have a path-finding ability by trying to locate Ista Leema. Otherwise, I found a great spot where I could sit on the lakeshore and read: snugged down between two rocks, out of the wind and almost out of sight.

Eighth Squad, who had been asleep all morning, came down to the water’s edge with Fourth Squad and practiced the martial art which is the basis of their close-combat. That was a lot of eye-candy for me, heh. In terms of fire power, Ruuel’s one of the weakest of the Setari, but knowing his talent set I wasn’t the least surprised that he seemed able to avoid the blows of anyone matching with him. Eighth’s captain, Kanato, had him breathing hard though, which I greatly appreciated.

They’d kept a businesslike atmosphere during the training session. Ruuel was his usual tersely-efficient self, of course, and both captains only made suggestions for improving weaknesses, gave the occasional nod of approval, and then dismissed their squads. They were standing together talking when Kajal, trailed by Nise, strolled down to the grassy bit of bank they’d been using as a practice ground.

"Sticking with the easiest targets still, Ruuel?" he asked, that really rich voice making every word double-mocking. "Why not try a real challenge?"

Ruuel barely spared him a glance. "You’re on duty, Kajal."

"Is the complete absence of threat here a real concern? These continuing excuses begin to smack of cowardice."

"Take it however you like." Total indifference.

Ruuel walked off, and though Kajal looked really pissed he didn’t do anything about it. Drama falls flat. Doesn’t surprise me in the least that Kajal’s like that, though I’m not sure why Ruuel refuses to spar with him. I expect Kajal wouldn’t care unless Ruuel had beaten him in the past. Who knows? One thing I’ve never been is competitive – I’m too lazy – and I don’t really understand the people who are.

Monday, March 24

Machismo redux

Moonfall started out as a real non-event for me since I wasn’t involved in it at all. The greysuits had set all sorts of instrumentation monitoring and scanning different parts of the village, particularly the rooftops, the amphitheatre and the platform.

Third Squad had been sent into the near-space to observe from there, which was considered the most dangerous facet of the experiments, so they’d sent Eighth Squad to support them. No-one was allowed in the town during the beginning of moonfall, and then they were going to send in a few test subjects and Fourth Squad. Theoretically Fourth Squad were going to avoid getting drunk, though I had my hopes up.

The moon rose late and I was tired of sitting around in the chill. But it was pretty to watch from a distance, and I was very glad that the night hadn’t gone the way I’d expected it to when we set out on this mission: me getting extremely drunk while everyone watched. After a while I bored of the light show and sat at a table outside the mess tent reading until people started to trickle back; greysuits and greensuits, Third and Eighth Squad, and then a disappointingly sober Fourth.

All in all I don’t think they learned anything momentous. Certainly not how the whole thing works. People started to drift off, Eighth heading out to take up their guard posts while Ruuel and Taarel did their usual stand together talking quietly and looking like they’re very much on each other’s wavelength. I was busy trying not to watch them, and also realising that I hadn’t arranged an excuse to spend the night in the infirmary.

"You’ve managed to be awake all day," Taarel said to me, coming over as Ruuel started off. "Quite out of character."

"Trying to make habit of it," I said. Taarel somehow always makes me feel a bit young and embarrassed.

"Working with the night-day cycle here is very interesting. It makes it considerably more difficult to keep shifts."

I was looking at Taarel, and didn’t see the start of it, just the way her eyes went wide. I turned because there was a scuffling noise behind me, and there was Kajal taking a kick at Ruuel, who simply leaned out of his way, and did the same again when Kajal aimed a blow to his face, before moving abruptly backward out of reach.

"Report to the infirmary, Kajal," he said. "You’ve inhaled too much aether."

"Fight, you cursed gelzz," Kajal spat. "Are you so afraid I’ll prove the better?"

"I haven’t the faintest interest in measuring myself against you." Ruuel looked and sounded supremely bored. "The only thing you’re proving is your own insecurity."

Kajal went all out then. And he was fast, really good (in as much as I am feebly able to judge, which is not at all). Ruuel just kept moving out the way. Quite a few of the Setari and random green- and greysuits had noticed but kept back. Taarel looked irritated, which is unusual for her, but she didn’t interfere. Finally, there was a blur too fast for me to follow and then Kajal was sailing through the air and twisted to a landing just in front of the tables. The grass is trampled muddy there, and he didn’t come down too hard.

"Give up this game, Kajal," Ruuel said, his voice incredibly cutting. "I won’t hold back if you try to play it again."

It was a pity Kajal was facing in my direction when he stood up. I saw the change in his face when he realised who I was. Taarel saw it too, and said: "Don’t be an idiot," but it was too late; she wasn’t quick enough to block him. His hand to my shoulder knocked me into the table and then he really was a blur.

Ruuel rolled with the blow to his face, not fast enough to avoid it altogether. Nor the kick to his stomach, the smash to his knee. And yet the second bout ended the same way, with Kajal sailing through the air and this time slamming hard into the ground in front of the tables. Ruuel walked over to him, and it was very easy to remember that the Setari were trained killers as he stood looking down at Kajal, face haughty as hell. But all he said was: "Infirmary," and walked off that way himself, limping.

I don’t know what the fall-out from that’s going to be. It’s not like the greensuits came and marched Kajal away. Does aether effect count as enough of an excuse? I decided not to mention the really nice bruise on my arm where Kajal pushed me into the table, and this morning everyone was acting as if nothing had happened.

I’m just glad to be heading back to Tare. Eighth Squad have been left behind as guards, taking it in pairs since there’s been no sign of any Ionoth attacking the settlement. They think the Ddura is based there and thus keeps it far clearer than the rest of the planet. I’m listening to the faint change in the hum of the ship as we prepare for take-off and trying not to be too obvious in watching Third and Fourth Squad in their pods.

Ruuel has the best black eye.

Out of the box

We had a side-mission before we returned through the rift gate. I didn’t find that out until we were on the way there and Taarel started the mission briefing. We were going to look over the second of the towns with circle roofs which the satellite had found. I was assigned to Fourth Squad, who were going despite Ruuel’s slight limp. Sefen from Third toted a drone which floated along behind him like a kite.

This town was on a river, not a lake, and the Litara didn’t land, but sent us out in a small flyer-shuttle-thing and then, I guess, flew around in a circle. The town looked so similar. Almost the same plants, a similar layout, central amphitheatre, blockish houses. But at the same time, very different.

"Threat."

We were well away from the edge of the town, following the remains of a road in the process of being undermined by the river. I’d been looking doubtfully at the very large number of paw prints laid over each other, so wasn’t particularly surprised. Sefen of Third indicated the first of them, standing well uphill. Muina’s version of a wolf, perhaps, though it was more like a border collie than the pictures of wolves I’ve seen. Black and white, not long-haired, ears upright – a bit larger than border collies and not nearly so amiable-looking. Not snarling, but watching in an attentive way, and the Setari wouldn’t be talking threat unless it was thinking about attacking us.

"More ahead," Ruuel said, glancing at Taarel.

"We’re not here to clear," she said. "Respond to attacks."

That was an uncomfortable journey. The dogs didn’t attack, but we kept seeing them on the tops of buildings and at the end of streets, watching, following. I was left with a strong impression of organisation and intelligence, and Auron and Ferus stuck very close to me. To my relief it looked like the dogs didn’t like the amphitheatre. Since the main reason we were there was to check out the platform, the emptiness was a big advantage.

The platform room, other than suffering from a lot of ground grot, was just the same. The Setari took some touch readings, and set up the drone, and then the Ddura arrived. Completely hysterical.

"Different Ddura," I said, under all the Hhhhhaaaaa!-ing.

"In the ecstatic phase," Ruuel said, using text over the interface. They all kept talking in text after that, which I thought was nice of them. And better still that Fourth Squad took me back up top while Third finished the final tests. It was still horribly loud, but nothing like as painful as being in the same room as the platform.

There were a ring of the dogs at the upper tier of the amphitheatre, just watching. Stephen King had come to town. I tried to figure out which dog was the pack leader, but there were quite a few candidates.

One thing about communicating with text is it’s only my grammar which sounds bad. I don’t have to worry about my dreadful pronunciation and can write a lot before I transmit it. When Third Squad came up to join us, I sent: "These maybe descendant domesticated working dogs. Similar type to species my planet. Very intelligent animal. Very strong herding instinct."

"How many of the animals on Muina resemble those of your world?" Ruuel asked.

"Hard to tell with birds, bugs. The sheep, the cats, these dogs. Domesticated animal. Otters, not domesticated animal, though did see once documentary people use them to fish. And the people, of course." I was tempted to ask what he thought of my idea that the Muinans had originally been Terrans, but decided I could live without that being on the mission log.

The dogs saw us off, totally like a tribe making sure strangers left their territory. That was their town, just as the first town belonged to the cats. Had belonged.

I was thinking about that a lot and watching scenery as we flew to the rift gate when Tsaile Staben sent me a channel request, a thing which surprised me since she was back at the first town and because bluesuits as a rule don’t talk to me.

"Devlin," she said, when I opened the channel. "It is traditional for the person who discovers a location to name it. The town where you were located was provisionally named at your retrieval, but the new settlement now needs a label. What will it be?"

"Pandora." I didn’t even have to think about it, just translated it into Muinan text.

"Recorded," she said, and closed the channel. Bluesuits make Ruuel look chatty. A few minutes later the new name popped up on the settlement’s map, giving me a fine sense of power.

Eeli had left me alone for the start of the flight back – I’m pretty sure Taarel gave her a lecture about bombarding me with questions, especially when I’m in headache recovery mode – but not long after I spoke to Tsaile Staben she came up to the corner of the observation lounge area where I’d parked myself and asked how I was feeling.

"Is good," I said, smiling at her eager expression. She really is too sweet and funny. "Would go lie down if headache drug wasn’t working."

She lit up. "I wanted to ask about the name of the settlement. Is Pandora the name of someone special to you?"

I laughed at that. "Don’t know anyone name Pandora."

Ferus from Fourth strayed over. I never seem to have these conversations without an audience. "Do I get to guess too? Maybe it’s the name of the place you live on your world?"

"Is creation myth from part of Earth called Greece," I said, suspecting Ferus of wanting to make a few entertaining suggestions. "Pandora was first woman, made by the gods. They gave her a box, told her she must look after it, but never open it. No-one ever seems to invent sensible gods. Pandora couldn’t resist, lifted lid a tiny crack to peek into box. But lid burst open and all the bad things in the world came flying out – hate, misery, greed. Pandora frantically try and shut box, but too late. Pandora in tears, seeing way she wreck the world–" I broke off, because Eeli obviously had no trouble working out why I’d called the settlement Pandora and was looking incredibly hurt and upset. I shouldn’t underestimate her. "Story not over," I said, patting her arm. "Pandora in tears, when she hear noise from box. Something still inside. A voice, pleading to be released, make her brave enough to open box again. The last thing in box is Hope, which is the thing which makes possible to endure all the bad things."

I smiled at her. "Is story of doing something irreversible. I unlock Muina. Bad things will come of that. But good things too. Point of name is that cannot be undone. Been feeling very small, thinking about that."

"What bad things?" Ferus asked, rubbing Eeli’s shoulder.

I pulled a face. "Did you look at building they making there? Great big box. Tarens don’t know how live with outside any more."

That made Eeli laugh, and surreptitiously wipe her eyes. "It’s a right name, isn’t it? One that fits."

"Thought so when Tsaile Staben asked me. Was thinking of those dogs, and the cats at first town, and other animals on this planet. For them, would be better if box stayed shut? Even though Seventh Squad make bad joke about killing them, the cats at Pandora won’t be let stay at amphitheatre. They already starting move away because not like so many people where kittens are. That been their place for centuries. Feel sorry for them. But this world belong you. Not my place to say, no shouldn’t be here."

I’m pretty sure the Tarens couldn’t screw up Muina nearly half as badly as we’ve done to some parts of Earth. Though I have my doubts about them understanding the concept of balconies and a nice view any time soon.

Tuesday, March 25

The art of doing nothing much

A nice quiet day. Not even a medical exam after the one I had after the flight yesterday. I went swimming, and walked the torture stairs, but otherwise just lolled about being glad to be wearing something other than my uniform, and trying to magically transport myself into the bathroom. It’s hard to work out just what it is I did to get to Earth.

I seem to have a rotation with First Squad tomorrow. I’ve missed them.

Wednesday, March 26

Unstable

Unstable rotations involve a lot of fussing over how long the gates are going to last. The spaces were flooded, which meant using the breathers and telling our nanosuits to be more like wetsuits. The first flooded space was a memory of trees, where sharp leaves whirled around like faceless fish and Lohn’s enhanced Light talent came in handy because Fire is not a useful talent underwater, and you sure as hell wouldn’t want to use Lightning even if First had that talent. After the aggressive leaves there was a big cavern filled with scaffolding around a monstrous Greek-style temple.

This was a space First Squad had only seen once before, one of a series which switched into this position. The Ionoth which was there was one they’d never encountered, a long, flat and frilly thing, like something you’d see on the Great Barrier Reef, but larger. It curled and wound its way through the scaffolding, trailing afterimages of itself.

Maze and Zee came back to the drowned forest space instead of signalling us through. "Kettara, come through with me. Remainder, hold here."

They both enhanced and went through. The brilliance of Lohn’s Light wall lit up the gate, but then he returned through it, shaking his head. Maze stayed just in front of the gate, then lifted both of his hands. The scaffolding broke apart and dived toward the Ionoth until all I could see was a pin cushion of metal and a spreading darkish cloud of blood. Telekinesis is dangerous when there’s things to pick up.

Everyone looked tired when we got back, and very wet and cold. That rotation had been a lot of swimming, and the leaves especially had been hard to deal with – Lohn hadn’t been able to keep up with the swirling clouds and when they got close the Setari had to kill them with their suit weapons.

While we were being scanned for stickies Maze said: "News of Pandora has leaked."

"That took longer than I expected." Zee gazed abstractly into nothing for a moment, then said: "They’re making the official announcement in response."

"Will news cause any problems?" I asked as we all headed for the showers. I find it funny to have a shower and have a conversation with six people at the same time, but the channels make it very easy to do.

"Not for us. The demands of people insisting they be taken to visit will cause other sections of KOTIS a few headaches, but they were really only holding off the announcement because they weren’t completely certain the camp wouldn’t meet similar disasters to the previous attempts." Zee paused. "Check Far Channel."

I didn’t know what that was, but managed to find it just as Mara said: "Will they confirm?"

"Partially," Maze said. "It was inevitable details of Caszandra’s existence would be known eventually, especially given the role she played on Muina. The factor which we knew would cause controversy is the relationship between Earth and Muina."

Which was exactly what was being discussed on Far Channel, a news and rumours service with attached forums. That Muina had been unlocked was the biggest news, but Far Channel added that they’d learned that a stray working with the Setari had been pivotal. The news service itself didn’t say much more than that, but the forums went far further. That the stray was from a parent world older than Muina, and possessed immense powers. That she was called Pandora, and could control the Ddura, had already located and destroyed one of the Pillars, and was teaching the Setari the secrets forgotten after the abandonment of Muina. Nine parts wild speculation, in other words.

"People will have strange idea of me," I said, after a short silence during which I’m sure everyone was reading the same interesting stories.

"Venerable Sage Caszandra," Lohn said, but added more seriously: "Some of this is a trifle vicious."

"No Heart Mind follower will embrace the idea that Muina is not our original home," Alay said. "I have to admit I find it strange myself. But you truly believe that, don’t you Caszandra?"

"Earth has fossil record going back millions years," I said, coming out of my shower-room, still working on my hair. I’ve been considering cutting it short lately, because even though the showers are very fancy things that blow gales of hot air at you for drying, it’s getting annoying having to work out the tangles. How Taarel manages those twirly pig-tail things I don’t know. "Suppose possible Muina has one too, that people came from Muina to Earth millions years ago. Not very likely simultaneous identical evolution two different planets."

"Would that bother you?" Mara asked. "If your people were truly Muinans?"

"No. Lot of people Earth would think that great fun. And lot of people Earth wouldn’t." I shrugged at Maze, who was watching me closely while we waited. Heart Mind was the main Taren philosophy/religion based on venerating Muina as a mother, and there seemed to be quite a few followers who were calling me interesting names. "Unless upset Heart Mind follower likely get in KOTIS and push me down stair, don’t care what say. Don’t know anyone but people here. They not likely make me talk to media yes?"

"You’re covered by the same privacy arrangements as the Setari." Maze gave me one of his approving captain nods, glad I wasn’t going to be upset. "And I think I can safely say that KOTIS isn’t going to let the media anywhere near you."

"I once volunteered to be a sacrificial offering to the media," Lohn said, coming out to give my shoulder a squeeze. "The interest in us is so voracious that a couple of us gave strictly anonymous interviews to a few selected representatives. KOTIS also releases details of spaces we clear to ease the hunger."

"Do you watch the fictions about Setari?"

Maze pulled a face, but Lohn shrugged. "Sometimes. The Hidden War keeps close to the actual issues we face. I don’t think I’ve seen or read anything which hasn’t included some wild improbabilities for purposes of drama. KOTIS isn’t nearly so rife with intrigue, and we don’t bend the rules half so often."

"Let alone take trips into the Ena for romantic interludes," Mara said, fluffing her hair as she and Alay came out. "Hurry up you two; my stomach is eating through its lining."

We went off to lunch. First Squad, particularly Lohn, were really tired, but I realised they were sticking with me while they looked through more of the discussion about me, and until they had some official direction on what the response to that would be. Which was to announce that a displaced person had indeed been part of the Setari mission which had unlocked Muina, and that this person originated from Muina’s sister planet Earth, which unfortunately did not possess developed talents or the knowledge of the Lantarens.

And I’m absolutely not allowed to go out into the city for the foreseeable future. Bleh. Mara says we can do more dodging practice to make up for it.

Thursday, March 27

Behind the news

Mara worked me into the ground today. First dodging, and then jogging around the obstacle park. Later she showed me more things you could do with your suit: how to make the weaponry and even covering your head. Then we swam.

I’ve another rotation with First Squad tomorrow, then another day of Mara, then another rotation. After that there’s nothing booked except my inevitable medical exams, but Mara said that I may be sent to Muina again.

I’m thoroughly bored of reading stories of the unlocking of Muina and the increasingly unlikely descriptions of me. The bits I don’t already know are the bits which make me feel bad. I don’t think these Heart Minders are really likely to try and hurt me, but it does make me uncomfortable to have upset people just by existing. I’m glad that I’m assigned to First Squad for a while, and that Mara’s left me too tired to fret too much.

Which is probably why she’s doing it.

Friday, March 28

Roaming

Today’s rotation was the closest I’ve come to being in danger working with First Squad. Another unstable rotation, which took us to a space full of these big metal containers stacked in rows, like you’d see at a port. It wasn’t the space First Squad had been expecting, and it was the first time they’d encountered the type of Ionoth we met there.

They were humanoid, but covered with a white-grey hair, and they seemed to have made themselves a home in the containers; a busy township. We were still outside the gate, looking through, when two of them leapt out, slashing at Maze with rusty metal pipes. As a dozen more of the hairy people came rushing at us, Ketzaren grabbed me around the waist and hauled me backward through our current space, which was an awkwardly low set of tunnels through pearly-cream rock.

It was bloody, horrible. The attackers were fast, armed and very determined, but First Squad were well-practiced at close combat, and enhanced. They’d been surprised by the rush, but didn’t come close to being overwhelmed.

"Withdraw to the entrance," Maze said, as soon as the last had fallen. He cast a quick glance into the container space, then followed as rear guard as everyone immediately obeyed.

"Broken?" Zee asked, watching him roll his shoulder and wince. They’d not been able to avoid being hit entirely.

"Seems not. Anyone else?"

"Nothing major." Lohn was clenching and unclenching one hand, and took out his med-kit to spray some bandage over a cut across his knuckles.

"Any chance to read the gate?"

"It looked solid. Days, at least," Alay said.

"We’ll go for a clearing entry approach," Maze said. "One blast from Kettara until we have a chance to evaluate."

The hairy people looked smaller in death, and the spreading pool of their blood made the gate entry both unpleasant and slippery. But none of them were lurking on the other side, and so Maze gestured us through and we moved to a defensible corner while they tried to estimate numbers.

"Dozens," Mara said, at last. "A few outliers circling, but most congregated that way." She nodded toward what seemed to be the centre of the space, where the containers were piled highest.

"I’d prefer a height advantage here," Zee murmured and Maze nodded his agreement.

The tops of the containers were rusty and pitted, and a couple of times crumbled alarmingly underfoot. But being up high allowed us to see the trap a few moments before it was sprung. A higher row of containers trembled, then became a tilting wall of metal which threatened to squash us and take out the containers we were standing on.

Maze had said "Up," before I even saw that, and we rose immediately and swiftly as the trap took out the entire area between the gate and the centre like a row of dominos. And before the noise had even settled they began shooting at us with crossbows, one catching Alay in the leg before Maze and Lohn between them created a mini-cataclysm in the area below. There were only a few left alive after that, and Maze and Zee chased them down while the rest of us gathered on top of a slightly tilted container to check Alay’s leg.

"Two made it through a gate," Maze said, returning. He surveyed the bolt Mara had removed from Alay’s leg. "Any sign of poison?"

"Nothing apparent," Mara said. "I’ve sealed the bleed."

"We’ll short-survey, then. Gainer, let us know if you start experiencing any symptoms."

Alay, Ketzaren and me stayed where we were while the others made a circuit of the space and inspected the bodies of the Ionoth, crisped though most of them were. They didn’t dawdle over it, and we were soon heading back out. Maze paused at the gate, then crossed to a kind of wicker cage tucked in one corner, cutting it open.

There were a half dozen little Ionoth in there. They reminded me faintly of ET, and all of them were in pretty miserable condition, like someone had been poking them with pointy sticks. They moved slowly, blinking fearfully at Maze, who stepped away, then signalled for us to leave.

"The original inhabitants of that space, I think," he said, following us through the gate. "These must be roamers." He surveyed the corpses again, extra-thoroughly, and then we headed back at double-time, with Zee carrying Alay using Telekinesis.

A truly horrible day. The Ionoth in that space, both types, were different from those I’d encountered before, more…real for want of a better word. Well aware of the gates between spaces, ready to defend themselves against attack, and a far cry from animals or shadows. And they drew blood.

I’m beginning to understand why Maze always looks so tired, beyond the strain of using psionic talents. It’s from worrying that someone in his squad will get killed. I need to stop asking myself how bad First’s injuries would have been if they hadn’t been enhanced.

Saturday, March 29

Competition

First Squad’s off rotation for a few days to give them a chance to recover. I asked Mara if squads ever went out with less than six members, and she said it’s rare, but possible so long as all the required talents are covered.

"Did it seem to you those hairy people prepare that ambush and trap particular for Setari?" I asked.

"It certainly felt that way, didn’t it?" Mara said, straightforward as usual. "But the type isn’t in our records at all, so it’s more likely we stumbled into some kind of inter-Ionoth dispute. Perhaps a different band of their own kind."

"That happen a lot?"

"No. Many Ionoth do move to nearby spaces seeking food, but usually return to their own after hunting. Roamers that are systematic explorers, or make any attempt to dominate other areas, are rare and most will fade if they are too long away from their home space. Those were well-organised. Formidable."

Mara has moved on from just throwing balls at me, and in today’s lesson was trying to get me to block attacks. She’d told me that I had no instinct for combat but that that was no reason I couldn’t be taught to defend myself. I still have my doubts, but I accept the value of trying to learn. She’s not soft with me, but she doesn’t ever say nasty things or make fun of me for being so bad, and in a painful way I’m enjoying being back with her.

"Who is best fighter in Setari?" I asked, thinking over the battle between Kajal and Ruuel.

"A question best not asked, as you apparently learned."

"Did Kajal get punish for that?"

"He would have lost privileges. The aether effect is not enough to excuse his behaviour, but does mean he’s not likely to lose captaincy over the incident."

"Maze doesn’t like Setari competing against each other, because of scene like that? Ruuel could have defuse situation by agree to fight him. But Kajal would never been satisfied, right?"

"Not unless he won," Mara agreed. "Maze doesn’t like anything which focuses our energy on each other rather than the Ionoth. While we were still Kalrani it was useful, but it’s becoming an unhealthy distraction for a few of the younger Setari."

Ruuel’s been on my mind a lot today (not that he isn’t usually) because now that First Squad’s on sick leave, I’ve been assigned to Fourth Squad for tomorrow’s rotation. I wonder how the black eye’s progressing?

He was really annoyed about it. More being forced to fight than the injuries. And he didn’t think Kajal had the slightest chance of beating him. That moment of anger, of disdainful arrogance, caught me by surprise. I’ve been putting a lot of thought into what Kaoren Ruuel is really like: whether he’s a humourless robot with a rod up his ass, or the Taren stereotype of a Place Sight talent, all sensitive and haunted and needing always to keep control. That fight showed me that I don’t know him at all.

I need to spend more time practicing ways to get home.

Sunday, March 30

Touchstone

I made sure to be early down to Red Lock for the rotation with Fourth Squad, and then had to wonder if I was trying to impress Ruuel, and what I thought that would achieve. I need to be sensible where he’s concerned. Anyway, turning up early was more about not being on the receiving end of one of those brief glances he gives people when they waste his time. Just a momentary look, not even a change of expression, and I know I’d shrivel.

The point was moot this morning because I was there in plenty of time and Ruuel was almost late. That gave me a chance to chat with Ferus and Eyse about the kinds of missions they usually do and how they’re still playing catch up from when the Pillar’s deactivation shifted so many spaces about. Both of them are really easy to talk to, with actual and apparent senses of humour. They’re looking forward to going back to Muina, to do exploration work in the larger cities.

Ruuel brought us all into mission channel and gave us the two sentences he considered a briefing just before he came into view. "In addition to on-going goals, we’ll be looking for the new type of roamer which First Squad encountered. Tracking their source space has been marked priority."

Triggering the gate-lock to open, he passed us to collect the usual rotation gear, and was back just as the lock was fully open. His black eye, sadly, had receded to a faint yellowish shadow, and he didn’t seem to be favouring his knee. But mission efficiency hit a snag before we’d even stepped into the Ena. Ruuel paused as the gate-lock was closing behind us, and then Selkie joined the mission channel.

"Devlin," Selkie said, making me feel exactly like someone called out of class by the school principal. "Does the word Gea mean anything to you?"

"Gear?" I repeated, since that’s how he’d pronounced it. "Part of machine?"

"Specifically, child of Gea."

"Oh. Gaia, maybe? Gaia is the same as Earth, or Terra. Different names for my planet in different languages. Gaia is Greek mythology mother-planet-goddess, a bit like how Muinans think of Muina. Child of Gaia would either be myth people called Titans, or anyone from my planet, depending on which way look at it. Did you find record Earth in histories?"

"No. An emissary from Nuri has walked out of deep-space and asked that the child of Gea be brought to speak with him."

Even Ruuel reacted to that one, frowning, and there was a little pause while Selkie was probably talking to someone else. Then he said: "Continue your rotation, but return within a kasse." He dropped out of the channel, leaving Fourth Squad looking at each other and at me, very startled.

"Focus," Ruuel said, eyes narrow, and sent us through the gate. I don’t think he was at all pleased to have such a big distraction waved under his squad’s nose at the beginning of a mission. It was lucky that the most I have to do is stop and start in time with my escorts because I’d certainly been given plenty to distract me from the rotation.

Nuri is the moon world with the Luddite ex-Muinans. It was located around eighty years ago and when the Tarens turned up the Nuran response was pretty much: "We don’t want to have anything to do with you. Go away." Since then they’d unbent only enough to say the same thing in rather more detail. They felt the Taren use of technology, particularly the interface, made them a corrupting influence and they could not risk exposure. No, they would not join an alliance to find or investigate Muina. No, they did not want to share their knowledge of Muina’s disaster. The last time Tare had sent a delegation to discuss the apparent increase in the severity of Ionoth incursions, the Nurans had barely stopped short of accusing the Tarens of being responsible.

So having a Nuran turn up on Tare asking to talk to me was big news.

I had a couple of hours to stew on that while Fourth Squad headed back through the same spaces First Squad had cleared last rotation. Ruuel was taking an extreme-caution approach to each space, since traps had been encountered last time, but we reached the container space without any sense of threat. And once in there, we found only the little greyish people watching us from a fortification they’d built.

There were over a dozen gates out of that space, and Fourth Squad examined every one. Although the one which the hairy people had run through had shifted out of alignment, they were able to detect signs of them at three other gates, and Fourth chose the most-travelled gate and headed through to the next space. It was a small island, no bigger than a couple of house-blocks, with exposed sandbars around it. Lots of sand-coloured mice lived in burrows beneath the tufty grass. And there were sharks in the water, given the stinking pile of butchered carcasses we found.

Again Fourth mapped the gates, and picked the one which was the most frequented. The next space was big, some kind of multi-story car park full of vague memories of cars, which made it very confusing. From what I could make out of the blurs, they were low and large, with what looked like chimneys in swirls of chrome. Ruuel and Sonn paused a long moment before gesturing us through, and when we were in Ruuel said over the mission channel: "Next level up, perhaps a dozen. There was a lookout."

There was a trap, too, but Ruuel could tell it was there before it was set off. He had Sonn send an enhanced ball of lightning up the ramp to the next level and we all stayed well back listening to the noise. Then Ferus pulled the trap apart with Telekinesis, and we went up. Eight stories of car park, and scads of gates, but once we’d tracked down and cleared the last of the hairy people and mapped the gates Ruuel said: "Not their home space either. We’ll pick this up another day."

I’ve no idea how long they would have gone on if not for the time limit caused by me and my Nuran visitor. They didn’t seem particularly annoyed about stopping, at any rate. We returned, not neglecting caution just because we’d been through the spaces already, and stepped back into real-space about ten minutes short of the full kasse.

I wasn’t altogether surprised to find Maze waiting for me. He nodded at Ruuel as we came through the gate-lock and said: "You and I are on escort duty," then added to me: "Put this on." He handed me a white dress and a carry bag with shoes and things inside, which I accepted automatically, then realised what they were.

"Serious?" I said, far too aware that even Fourth Squad weren’t capable of not staring.

"The liaison branch is very eager to ensure that the Nurans continue dialogue with us, and they’ve decided it might be impolitic for you to be wearing our uniform. The clothes are Mara’s."

"Lohn somewhere right now laughing a lot, right?"

"Very much so." He smiled, amused. "Don’t worry, we’ll be with you."

"Wearing dresses?" I asked, but decided it wasn’t worth arguing about. Sighing, I went and had a shower, keeping my hair dry, and then put on Mara’s sundress and sandals, which were only slightly too big for me. She’d included a hairbrush, and some nearly-clear lip gloss which I smoothed on, then let my hair out of its tight braid, pulled it up into a high ponytail and looked at myself in the mirror.

I really loved the style of dress, and will have to remember it next time I go shopping, but I didn’t understand why a dress at all. Why not any of my own clothes? Yeah, the dress looked better than my casual, practical outfits, but I felt like I was being set up on a blind date and I seriously didn’t like the implications of that. Alyssa once told me that I’m too obliging, that I objected to things way too late, but that dress handily jumped me straight to stubborn doubt.

Then I remembered my lab rat.

Trying not to smile at the idea of showing up to an important diplomatic meeting wearing an "experimental animal" label for anyone with Symbol Sight to read, I stuffed my uniform harness in the bag and went out.

"Does know yet what Nuran want talk about?"

"Your planet, apparently." Maze brought me into a channel with him, Ruuel and someone called Tarmian, ushering me toward the nearest elevator. "He hasn’t been waiting long. It took some time to convince him that he’d have to come here if he wanted to talk to you, and the flight landed just before your return."

"If you can succeed in getting him to speak at all it will be progress," said Tarmian, who was a woman with a deep, husky voice. "The most I’ve managed is to be told I don’t need to know his name."

Selkie and someone called Ganaran joined the channel, and I had a sinking realisation that I was supposedly going to have a conversation with a planetary emissary while a bunch of people made helpful suggestions to me in my head. It made me wonder if Alyssa was right about the whole too obliging thing, because it hadn’t seemed to occur to any of them that my interests in such a conversation might not coincide with theirs. Or maybe it had, but they were hoping no independent thought would cross my mind. I listened without comment to Tarmian and Ganaran, who are from KOTIS' liaison branch, telling me to let the Nuran lead the conversation, but to try and encourage him to expand on topics he was willing to discuss. Maze and Ruuel kept quiet, though they did both enhance themselves just before we went in, something I should be used to, but which was really disconcerting with my arms and shoulders bare.

Preconceptions are fun. I was expecting someone like a Buddhist monk, complete with bald head and orange robes. The closest I got were the robes, and they were more maroon and white, and not really robes. He had the same sort of colouring as Ruuel and Taarel and Selkie, but wore his hair long, with the sides caught back in a high tail except for strips before his ears. He looked like a manga samurai, complete with two swords tucked into a belt sash.

The other person in the room was a curvy and sweet-faced woman with a lot of curly black hair which kept trying to escape her hairclips. She was wearing a reddish-plum uniform, a new type to me. Liaison branch.

"This is Caszandra Devlin," the woman – Tarmian – said and the Nuran turned and looked at me. His expression was appraising, not particularly warm or pleased or anything, and he bowed, barely more than a nod of the head.

"Hello," I said, in English and then in Taren. I wasn’t going to attempt bowing.

"I am indebted for your time," said the Nuran. He spoke with an accent, and just enough hesitation to suggest that Taren was at least a different dialect to his own language.

"Sit down, please," said Tarmian, gesturing to a coffee table and couches arrangement. The room also had a more formal table and chairs, and a couple of corner clusters of seats and smaller tables, and even an actual long window giving an excellent view of a massive storm outside. That was disorienting; weather is so separate from daily life here.

The couches were the firm, solid sort. Maze and Ruuel stood behind my couch, Tarmian had a smaller chair to my right and the Nuran sat in the centre of the couch opposite.

"How did a child of Gaia reach this world?" he asked. And then there was a tickly feeling in my head and I could hear his voice add: Are you able to reply this way?

Yes? I tried thinking, all too conscious of Maze and Ruuel standing behind me, neither of whom were likely to have missed me suddenly sitting up much straighter. I’ve no idea what Ruuel’s Sights would have shown him, and I stumbled on into answering the verbal question to buy myself time. "Walked through a gate from my planet to Muina. Was there until people from Tare found me, brought me back here."

My name is Inisar. His eyes, long and dark, were watching me very steadily. "Can you tell me what knowledge Gaia retains of Muina?" I have been sent to offer you Nuri’s aid.

Aid? "None. I had never heard name Muina before Tarens told me it. There are no stories, no recognisable stories, about people my planet going to other planets. Were Muinans first from my planet?"

"I do not know." Aid in the form of haven. "That Gaia and Muina shared a bond is remembered. It is an ancient one, stretching far beyond any record." I see that the distortions the people of this world inflict on themselves have been passed to you.

The interface?

"The path to Gaia had long been lost, however, even before we departed Muina. Had there been any unusual events in Gaia’s Ena preceding your arrival on Muina?" I am sorry that I am unable to undo their distortion, but I can offer an escape from this place. First to Nuri. And then to your own world.

Both Tarmian and Ganaran said something over the interface at this point, but I didn’t pay any attention to their suggestions, just giving Tarmian a blankly distracted look.

"The…my planet, psychic talents are considered fiction. We have forgotten everything, if ever knew. Don’t know Ena, don’t access it." I felt unreasonably angry. Holding two conversations at once while someone else talked at me was beyond stressful, especially when my home was dangled under my nose as some sort of bait. I could feel Maze shift behind me, and didn’t know whether to feel comforted or threatened by his presence. Nuri able locate natural gate my world?

"How greatly are the children of Gaia troubled by Ionoth?" With a link of both birth and heart to Gaia, a path can be found. Natural gates are not constantly open, but if you were able to travel to Muina, it will be possible to find that gate and return you.

"Ionoth not able reach real-space on my world. Their existence, existence of spaces, none of that is known. Are spaces memories of worlds, or nightmares of worlds?" Nuri wants something in exchange?

"Both." You have opened Muina to Tare. That cannot be undone, although we would ask you to balance the act. "Memories, nightmares, dreams. They are the expression of the living, imprinted on the Ena." Beyond that, we prefer not to see a touchstone in such misguided hands. Returning you to Gaia will remove the risks you pose.

Touchstone is me? I paused, because it was getting really hard to keep track of the conversation, and the person called Ganaran was saying something excitedly about some theory being validated. "Do you know if all people my planet have this enhancement talent?" Why does Nuri think Tare people so bad?

They repeat the arrogance of the past, seeking to reach beyond what is born to them. Without balance, without wisdom, they are twisting themselves outside nature. "You are something which appears perhaps once in ten generations. Not unique to Gaia." Will you allow me to remove you from this place? You need only take my hand.

Are you Nuri equivalent of Setari? Protect Nuri from Ionoth? I was struggling to decide how I wanted to react, the idea of perhaps being able to go home shrieking at me, along with a great deal of resentment that they couldn’t just offer to do it openly. But I at least realised that he probably wasn’t going to be able to do what he planned. "Do you know why it is some talents I enhance strength, and other talents I make different?"

He hadn’t expected it. He was Ruuel-level in terms of difficulty to read, but when he heard that he drew back his hands from where they had rested unmoving on his knees.

"I first found out was enhancement talent when someone tried teleport me," I went on helpfully, glad to be sticking to just out-loud talking for a minute. For one thing the in-my-head talking itched. "We ended up in totally wrong place. Fell down. Most talents, stronger, but some go very strange."

"The distortion inflicted on you by these," he said, lifting his eyes past my shoulder. "Calling themselves Setari with no understanding of what that title means."

Even if could go with you, I told him silently while he gave either Ruuel or Maze a long survey, I do not think could accept offer. I miss my home, but it would be selfish of me to place homesickness above helping stop people be eaten by nightmares. Although I know Tare not place my interests above theirs, they mostly treat me as civilised people should. Also, I think Nuri not helping fix problem by acting as if Tare people too stupid to learn. If child is about to walk off cliff, what point saying they lack wisdom and watch them fall? And interface is a tool. No less unnatural than those two blades you wear.

Well said.

To my surprise he was looking at me with something approaching approval. Then he stood up.

"I will communicate your answers to the elders. Thank you for speaking with me."

And he vanished. Teleported. I guess he had no reason to stick around once he knew he had little chance of getting me out of there. I would love to know whether my refusal would have counted if teleporting me away had been an option.

"Nurans even weirder than Tarens," I said, wishing I could scratch somewhere just behind my frontal lobe. I accessed my own log, but wasn’t really surprised to see that, unlike the Ddura, the Nuran hadn’t been audible.

"That was a shorter conversation than I expected," Tarmian said, blankly.

"You couldn’t hear rest," I said, with an internal sigh. "I make transcript, give me minute write."

"He was speaking using a similar method to the Ddura," Ruuel said, as expected.

"That would explain why your heart rate kept spiking." Maze leaned forward to examine my expression.

"What was his true purpose?" Selkie asked, the first time he’d spoken.

"Came rescue me from misguided and corrupt Tarens," I said, risking a glance up at Ruuel, but he was more expressionless than ever. "Let me concentrate now or will forget bits." I dropped out of the channel and shut my eyes, relieved when they obediently moved away. I was actually really upset and stressed and didn’t want to talk to them or even see them while I thought about turning down going home.

Ever since my jaunt to Earth’s near-space, I’ve had this plan to work out what I’d done, and find a way to do it properly. As I’d told the Nuran, I know that the Tarens won’t put my interests above theirs. Going home isn’t just about homesickness, it’s about choosing the best option for me.

I blame Doctor Who. Mr Spock. The Scooby Gang: both the ones in the Mystery Machine and the ones with the stakes. I’ve spent my life with stories of people who don’t walk away, who go back for their friends, who make that last stand. I’ve been brainwashed by Samwise Gamgee.

Even though I’m no longer critical to unlocking Muina, I still made a difference to First Squad’s encounter with those roamers, and the way things are going, it won’t be the last time my enhancement could save lives. There’s just no way I can cut and run simply because I’m an assignment, and a test subject, and I can’t absolutely trust the entire hierarchy of KOTIS. Even second level monitoring isn’t a big enough reason to abandon First Squad. They matter to me, so much. I can’t go back to being me if I have to spend the rest of my life ashamed of myself.

So when I wrote down everything the Nuran said, I didn’t leave anything out, and by the time I was done and had re-read it a few times I’d calmed down and accepted that I was choosing to do this, that I wasn’t trapped, hadn’t lost my only chance. Good or bad idea, I mean to see this out.

Something cold touched the back of my hand at the end of all this decision-making, which nearly had me leaping out my skin, but it was only a glass. Ruuel ignored my expression, and made me take it, saying: "You haven’t eaten since before the rotation."

Ever the captain. Drinking did make me realise I was really starving, though, and I was glad to see a tray of food at one of the corner clusters of table and seats. Giving in to the inevitable, I forwarded Ruuel and Maze the transcript in return and went and picked over the food while they, and probably every bluesuit in KOTIS, read it through.

Ruuel went out of the room, leaving me alone, but he and Maze came back while I was still eating, and joined me sitting around the little table of food.

"Feeling better?" Maze picked up one of the chewy sticks of bread.

"Just tired. Are people from Kolar likely turn up and want talk to me as well? Can I pretend not speak language if they do?"

"They haven’t focused on you, and will not if that can be avoided."

"Distracted by our failure to communicate any of these developments to them," Ruuel added. "Kolar heard that Muina was unlocked from the news services."

"Same Nuri, maybe? Think interface bad, but big coincidence if didn’t hear about me through it."

Maze shrugged, and the faintest wince crossed his face: his shoulder was still hurting him. "Very likely they’ve cultivated local informants. We vastly underestimated the Nurans, had no idea they had the ability to travel through the Rift without vehicles. No wonder they were so disinterested when Tare announced that we’d located Muina."

"Will Tare unlock Muina for Kolar and Nuri?"

"Kolar, very likely. I’ve no idea how it will be handled. I don’t like the idea of divvying Muina up into territories, but the trade agreements we’ve established are far too important to try and deny access to the Kolarens. I wouldn’t care to guess what’s going to happen with Nuri. They did just try to…rescue you."

"Can you estimate how much of what he told you was true?" Ruuel asked.

"No. Or, he seemed all my honour not permit lies but then act pleased when I told him I thought Nurans stupid hypocrites. He didn’t act like he lied, but guess he didn’t necessarily agree with what ordered to do. Think he meant it about Setari."

Ruuel gave me a dry look – quite the most reaction I’ve ever had from him – then said: "Did you believe he would be able to return you to your home?"

"Believe he thought he could." Remembered anger made me frown. "Semantics, really. He said he here to offer me Nuri’s aid. Was here to remove inconveniently located thing called touchstone from hands of people Nuri not want to have. Would still count as rescue, of sorts, but was for their benefit, not mine. Don’t see that they’d think me any less corrupt and misguided than Tarens. Is Setari some sort historic title?"

"Not so far as I was aware," Maze said. "The word wasn’t created for us, and has a long-standing meaning of specialist with an overtone of special guard."

"And touchstone?" Dalenset – dalen for touch and set for stone. I think touchstone is a word on Earth, too, but don’t think it refers to people.

"Not even in the dictionaries. Though I can see how the name might come about for a talent like yours."

I sighed. One in ten generations was not something I’d been happy to hear. "Will I more restrictions because this?"

"I don’t know. We made a mistake, letting the Nuran meet with you. He knows your face now." Maze wasn’t happy about it.

"Think he try rescue me again? Risk teleporting?"

"It comes down to a question of what is more important to them." Ruuel had reverted to being super-shuttered, but opened his eyes properly as if I was a symbol he was trying to decipher. "Did they want to use you for some purpose we don’t understand? Or simply ensure that we could not?"

Since I was falling asleep, Maze took me back to my rooms after that. He didn’t give me any speeches about staying or going, just told me that if anything even slightly unusual happened I was to send an alert immediately. An alert is a personal panic button, sending a broadcast message to whoever is on security detail. I don’t count Ghost as anything unusual any more, and was very glad she showed up after my nap, sitting on my desk shamelessly begging for attention while I’ve filled up the last of my diary writing this down.

So today I met a psychic space samurai called Inisar, who did me no favours by making it clear to the Tarens that I’m even more interesting than they suspected, and who may or may not be sent back to kill me. As a result I decided to not be just Cass any more, and I know there’ll be times I’m going to regret that so hard, just as I know that the people who are important to me here will have spent some of today discussing strategies for making sure I don’t have reason or opportunity to leave, and finding a balance between me wanting some privacy and their wanting to keep watch on me at all times.

And after ninja and samurai, I’m wondering if next up will be psychic space pirates.

Lab Rat One

Description

April to mid-July

In the months since Cassandra Devlin walked off Earth onto another planet, she has grappled with everything from making blankets to helping psychics battle the memories of monsters. Not able to find a way home, she has instead gained friends and a purpose. Unfortunately, that purpose brings with it the pressure of being more than a little valuable, and those she has befriended are also her guards, ordered to explore and control her abilities to find out just what it is a touchstone can do.

Test subject was not the career path Cass had been planning.

With no privacy, too-frequent injuries, and the painful knowledge that she must always be an assignment to her Setari companions, Cass can only wish for some semblance of normality and control.

And as her abilities become more and more dangerous, tests and training may be the only thing capable of protecting Cass from herself.

April

Tuesday, April 1

Fool

April Fool’s Day. Totally appropriate for the idiot who turned down a chance to go home to Earth because she thinks she should play hero. Fortunately, all my contribution to the hero-ing business involves is standing where I’m put, ready to be hauled about by the people whose job it is to save the planet, or the galaxy, or however much of the universe is supposedly at risk. And what I’ve really signed up for is more labrattery, to figure out what touchstone means.

I missed having a diary yesterday, and considered switching to an electronic version, but I’d have to use Taren script. Being able to write in English, to have a book filled with the things no-one here can understand: I think I need it even more now I’ve decided to stay. This new diary comes all the way from Kolar, and has thick, white-brown paper, and a picture of endless waving grassland on the cover.

Starting fresh like this made me feel like I should write down some missed-it-by-a-few-months New Year’s Resolutions, but everything I’ve thought up so far is something I don’t really have any choice about. I can’t choose not to be on second level monitoring, and I don’t want to resolve to not get injured, or save the universe, or anything completely out of my control. But the least I can do is try to is:

- Make more than a half-assed effort at training.

- Find a way to be Cass instead of Caszandra.

- Remember that even kittens might be evil.

Some of those will probably fall into the too-hard basket as well, but it’s something to go on with.

After my meeting with the Nuran, I emailed Mara and asked if I should send her dress to laundry, but she said to just bring it down to her rooms the next morning and we could go on into the city. I was pleased, because I’d been expecting my security to be tightened, not relaxed. The invitation did make me remember "psychological aspects", but I think I’ll go nuts if I don’t take most things at face value, if I waste my time trying to decide if people like me or have been ordered to entertain me. I have to accept that it’s probably both, and move on. Part of my strategy for coping with staying.

Besides, I was very interested in seeing Mara’s apartment, which turned out to have the same layout as mine, just with a mildly cluttered and lived-in air. I liked the public space decoration: all the walls looked like gauzy curtains that shifted as if the wind was blowing them. Not what I was expecting for a world where hardly anyone has or wants windows.

"Lohn’s just getting ready," Mara said, when I handed over the bag and dress. "Maze’s description of your expression when he gave this to you has made me regret not going along to watch."

"Was wondering just exactly what wanted me to do with Nuran," I admitted.

"We’re going to have to get you some clothes without unfortunate messages written on them. Sit down."

She took the dress off into her bedroom, and I sat down and was gazing about interestedly when the bathroom door opened and Lohn came out.

"Mar, did I leave my–" He stopped and we looked at each other for what couldn’t have been more than a couple of seconds, but felt a good deal longer, and then he turned and went into the bedroom and I thought about how fit and good-looking the Setari are. Lohn’s got an incredible body, and has the added advantage of being fun and easy to get along with. Of course, he and Mara are so obviously a couple that I’ve never spent much time thinking about him in terms of being an attractive male creature, but I gave the question some serious consideration just then.

"Sorry about that," he said, coming out a minute later with Mara, this time with clothes on. Very pink in the face.

"Now you don’t get to tease me about dress," I said, trying not to laugh or display any recollection of thoughts about attractive male creatures.

Mara, once she saw that I wasn’t going to act like a twelve year-old about seeing a hot naked guy, smiled and said: "I don’t think he’s capable of that. He’s been thinking up silly questions to ask you all morning."

"Is going to be very disappointed then." But I knew he’d ask anyway. I don’t mind Lohn’s teasing. He’s never mean. "Can we really go out into city? Was worried I end up confined to quarters."

"For the moment the rule is that anywhere outside of the core Setari areas you must have at least two people escorting you, and one of them must have Combat Sight." Mara led the way out of her apartment. "If we take seriously the idea of the Nurans having a reason to kill you, then you’re a good deal safer anywhere with us than alone in your rooms. Fortunately you were already in a suppression room, but we don’t have any real idea of the limits of the Nurans' abilities or whether they’d be able to locate you through the suppression."

"Maze said he didn’t have any threat sense from your Nuran," Lohn added. "But called him beyond formidable, which is Maze-speak for I don’t think I could take him. Still, this idea that they might decide to eliminate you rather than, ah, rescue you is just speculation. For one thing, it doesn’t match what little we know of the Nurans' philosophies. And if your talent set really is that rare, it doesn’t seem likely that they’ll give up on the rescuing option."

I wondered if the Setari would be sent to try and rescue me back, but didn’t ask, only hoped it didn’t come to that. I sure as hell don’t want to play Helen in a space-aged Trojan War.

It was a great day out. We went to a Tairo match, had lunch, shopped a little, and toured some of the more scenic bits of the city. There was a wonderful flower garden, and we spent some time on this amazing game, where the aim is to get from one side of a room to the other, except the room is full of constantly moving platforms going in every direction, and a Levitation field slows your fall if you miss jumping from one to the next. That impressed me immensely, for all that I spend my days with flying psychic space ninjas. I let myself enjoy it all. Lohn and Mara are great together, and they treat me like a younger sister. It was easy to forget they’d probably been assigned to me for the day.

I kept thinking about my decision to stay, about how immediate my refusal to go with the Nuran was. It wasn’t just a fit of heroic self-sacrifice. I mean, I’m miserable a lot of the time, and I’ll never stop missing my family, or real music, or all the things I liked to read and do which just aren’t here. But now that I’m getting better at speaking the language I’m having fun more often, even when First Squad aren’t going out of their way to entertain me. Enough to make me wonder if going home to be just another noob at university would be a little bland.

I think in part I’ve caught Mum’s I-want-to-know-what-happens-next disease. And, seriously, visiting other planets, cruising around exploring lost alien civilisations. Working with psychic space ninjas. It’s far from dull. I want to help the Setari win. To fix the problem, and stop monsters getting out and killing people. And play more amazing games, and see more planets. I guess, in a stressed, periodically lonely and uncertain of the future way, I’m happy here.

At the least I was in quite a cheerful mood when Zan came swimming with me today, and only briefly wondered if it was her turn on the Baby-sit Devlin Roster. She seemed tired and less Zen than usual. And I think she was curious about the Nuran, since she made a few oblique references to him without outright asking questions. I’m not sure how secret he’s supposed to be, but since Zan’s one of my captains, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to explain what had happened.

We had lunch afterwards, and I told her about April Fool’s Day and hoaxes I’d thought funny, and then about that War of the Worlds radio play, where all these people thought Martians really were invading. Then our schedules for the next month were updated, and I’m being posted back to Muina, along with Twelfth, Fourth and First Squad.

When I asked, Zan said she didn’t know how she felt about the trip; Muina was a nearly mythical thing in a way and the idea of being able to go there, to touch the past which was so central to her present, was something she wasn’t sure she was equal to. That’s the most open speech she’s ever given me, and it left me pleased but also worried about her.

Twelfth are going to be boring themselves with guard duty at Pandora, and First and Fourth are forming an expeditionary squad with a small team of greysuits to start investigating the biggest of the big cities. This is a lot more dangerous than guarding Pandora, since the Ddura don’t seem to sweep places without patterned roofs nearly as frequently. And I’m assigned to Fourth Squad, so a lot of enjoying looking at Ruuel in my future – not sure whether that’s a good or bad thing. And Zan might get in a bit of enjoying looking at Maze, heh.

Zan is still the only person here who pronounces my name the right way. Of course, I’ve never tried to correct the initial misspelling, but I like Zan for paying attention when I first talked to her.

Wednesday, April 2

Moving base

The Nuran is the main reason I’m being sent back to Muina. Not only in the hopes it will make it harder for him to find me, but because KOTIS figures Fourth Squad dragging me around interesting Muinan buildings is the best way to go about finding out what a touchstone is. They’re hoping for more security clearance, and I naturally want nothing to happen. Still, on the scale of things I’ve had to do as part of my career as an experimental animal, exploring lost civilisations rates far higher than blood tests and brain scans.

I’m already itching to be outside, out of Tare’s endless box cities, though I’m going to miss Ghost. I did think semi-seriously about smuggling her along in my backpack, but, meh, I don’t need another lecture and they might want to capture her again. So far as I can tell, after she escaped she hasn’t been sighted by anyone but me. I’m happy to keep it that way.

I’m in my pod again, comfortably surrounded by First Squad. Alay’s on the mission, although she’s still walking with a pretty pronounced limp. She’ll be on limited duty until she can move about properly.

Ruuel is in the opposite corner from me, in the pod Taarel used last time. The pods all face forward, so all I can really see is a bit of arm and a leg right now, but that’s probably all to the good. I’m currently in one of my wish-I-didn’t-like-him moods. Mainly because of a dream I had last night, where I kept following him around until he gave me this irritated, long-suffering glance and I woke up feeling absolutely mortified.

I guess that counts more as a nightmare than a dream, and I can put it down to a pre-Setari era show I started watching in preparation for working with Fourth Squad called Super Sight Six. Psychic detectives! The main character is a nightmare-ridden Place Sight talent, who is recruited by this hilariously New Age Guru Sight Sight talent. There’s a good-looking but temperamental Combat Sight talent, who I bet is going to turn out to be the love interest; a Gate Sight talent constantly distracted by distant, undiscovered gates into near-space; a Symbol Sight talent who loves puzzles; and a Path Sight talent who prowls about restlessly, then bounds off on the track of something. These are the Taren stereotypes of what the various Sights are like, but I’m particularly finding the Place Sight talent’s story useful, because it helps me understand both Ruuel and Halla far better. The feelings, even the thoughts of living creatures leave the strongest impressions for Place Sight, and that can be as wonderful as seeing patterns of joy as a musician plays, or as horrible as a brush against someone’s arm bringing a flood of hidden hate or lust or resentment. It’s considered rude to touch Place Sight talents, and if you do, whatever you’re feeling strongly at that point is likely to be very clear to them. Fortunately the visual component isn’t as clear-cut, and the touch component usually needs direct contact, meaning the gloves shield most of it. And back when Ruuel and I had our handholding marathon, it hadn’t occurred to me to lust after him.

Unfortunately Sight Sight is very visual, and whether through Place or Sight, he is no doubt completely clear on the fact that the enhancing stray thinks he’s hot. And who knows what Tsur Selkie has seen watching mission reports?

Cringe factor 9.

Architectural Fail

The Setari squads on this mission are all very upbeat. They like this assignment. Even those who simply consider Muina a part of the past hope that by being able to properly explore it they might find records and explanations and solutions. They so rarely get to do anything except fight an unwinnable war.

I’d wanted to talk to Zan during the flight, but she and Ruuel and Maze went off to be captainly at each other. Still, I had a nice chat with Mori Eyse from Fourth, and Dess Charn and Sora Nels from Twelfth, about our various assignments on Muina. Since I mainly knew Twelfth Squad from the grim race of the Pillar retrieval, I’d been curious to know if they were as temperamental as Lenton, and whether they seemed to resent Zan as much as he does. But they were unexpectedly normal – overly serious as almost all of the Setari are, but polite and with hints of personality behind the rigid professionalism. Very few of the Setari are willing to be off-duty around me, but Twelfth unbent enough to ask questions and have non-controversial conversations.

Pandora looks horrible: a big white blot on the landscape. The main building is up to its third story and still growing, though most of it hasn’t had the interiors finished. No sign of balconies, though there’s more windows than I feared. There’s a bunch of smaller outbuildings which are in use, though – amazingly quick construction. Sora was telling me that they don’t dig the foundations, that the buildings send down roots (like teeth, given what they look like) and that fittings like pipes and ducts grow themselves, all based on an immensely detailed scale model. Around the construction site are tents and vehicles and people and dirt trampled to mush, and the beginnings of paths spreading like white filigree.

"How many people are here now?" I asked, as we took one of the floating sleds across to what had become a place I barely even recognised.

"Over two hundred and fifty." I’d asked Mori, but it was Ruuel who answered – since I’m assigned to them, it means I travel with Fourth Squad rather than First, who were on a different sled.

"For now this is Muina’s capital," Ferus added. "I was very disappointed that the meaning of the name wasn’t included in the announcements."

"Meaning of name is gift," I said. "Or giver of gifts or something like. Been a while since I read Greco-Roman myths."

"Do you know all the different beliefs of your world?" Mori asked.

"Not even close. Earth has hundreds of different languages and cultures. Greco-Roman stuff comes from over six thousand Tare years ago – it’s not an active mythology." At least, I’d be really shocked if anyone was actively worshipping Zeus and Hera and all them.

We only spent an hour at Pandora, watching more supplies and people being unloaded from the Litara and waiting for the Diodel arrived. The Diodel’s a smaller ship than the Litara, and has been off surveying, and is going to be our base during the mission. It beds (pods) thirty and the crew, in addition to First and Fourth Squads, are a bluesuit called Onara who commands five greensuits, a pinksuit, a medic called Learad with an assistant called Vale, and eight greysuits who are the research team – mainly archaeologist sorts. The head greysuit is a woman called Rel Duffen, who doesn’t seem keen on either the Setari or me, but at least isn’t overtly hostile.

The pods are in long lines down the centre of the ship rather than grouped in rooms. I’m between the two squads, with Zee in front of me and Sonn behind. And Ruuel one behind her. While I was waiting for the ship to take off I sent Zan an email which said: "On Earth, if someone seemed unhappy but not like they wanted talk about it, I’d send them a message which said hugs. If you get any free time, I recommend going to watch the otters." I attached a very badly drawn map, and was glad when she sent me a reply: "Thank you."

I don’t want to prod Zan too hard. I’m starting to accept how unlikely second level monitoring makes it for anyone to talk about anything sensitive with me. And how I’ve got Buckley’s chance of being taken off second level monitoring any time this century.

Today’s going to be a long day. We’re heading to the largest of the old cities, which is several time zones away from Pandora, and the sun will set in our new location well into what would be sleep shift for the squads who started out from Tare this morning. They think the city was once called Nurioth. Guess the Nurans named their moon after it.

Once we were underway the ship captain, Tsel Onara, gave us a to-the-point rundown of what we would be doing that day. Over the last few days the Diodel has been making an air survey of Nurioth, mapping it and looking for a place which was both central and clear enough to set down. They’d located a patch where there were no buildings beneath the trees, so first up the Setari (and me) are going to go down and weed a clearing. They want a very big area, as level as possible, with a large perimeter so they could see anything approaching the ship.

After that, the Setari are going to tour the immediate surrounds and clear out any threats. Depending on what the Setari’s threat assessment is, the greysuits may or may not be permitted to enter the nearest building, guarded by a mix of greensuits and Setari. Everyone is to be back at the ship before the sun starts to go down.

Archaeology is a slow business, so I don’t see how a team of eight can do anything more than a basic review. They’re really just checking to see what the conditions are like here, and whether useful things like writing might be better preserved. We’re flying over the city now and it’s seriously huge.

Thursday, April 3

Demolition

We levitated down into the park, both Setari squads together, and me tucked under Par Auron’s arm. It was a gorgeous park. Tremendously overgrown and neglected of course, but the whitestone paths were still in place, and the leaves were just starting to turn red and yellow, gem-like against black wood. Once the Diodel had stopped hovering overhead and zoomed off to circle the city, birds began to peep and chirp cautiously. We’d come down in a relatively clear section in the very centre, and in one direction was an avenue of trees – the strength of the whitestone had kept all but a few trees to the outside of the path. The spot where we’d set down had a barely visible round shape – either a filled-in pond or a border of a garden – and the plants underfoot were fine and feathery.

"Mark two," Maze said. "Distant."

Mark two is a bit like saying ten o’clock. When a squad enters a space, they count the direct left of the gate as mark 1, and continue around to nine for a semi-circle, or sixteen if the gate is central rather than on one side of the space. Since there’d been no gate involved here, they’d set a direction for mark one before leaving the ship.

"Structure at mark five," Ruuel added. "Beyond that is out of range. Sweep?"

Maze nodded. "Take ten to sixteen." First Squad enhanced before heading out, leaving me to trail along with Fourth Squad in a big semi-circle through the half of the park in the opposite direction to the big avenue. I think that half must have been more cropland than park, since there was barely a trace of paving and I saw occasional patches of some kind of grain plant, struggling in the shade of the trees.

Just like with Pandora, the place was seething with life, except some of that life was Ionoth. I guess the memories of monsters are just another predator to deer and pippins, and the miniature pigs, and some things very like chipmunks which I hadn’t seen at Pandora. Birds in every direction, especially a really annoying plump and hysterical type which stayed hidden in the grass until you were right on it and then shot up into the sky shrieking its head off. I was busy being guilt-ridden that we were about to level the entire area, and kept thinking of that old song – I’ve no idea who it’s by – that goes "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot". It’s not like we don’t clear-fell on Earth, but having been fed environmental awareness since grade one, I couldn’t help feeling responsible all the same. It overwhelms me at times: accidental or not, I changed a world. Worlds.

First Squad took care of whatever was at mark two with a minimum of fuss, and it wasn’t until we were at the mark thirteen that Fourth Squad found anything of interest, pausing.

"Underground," Ruuel said. "Hold here, off surface. Sonn, with me. Stay unenhanced."

That was an odd one. Auron and Ferus levitated those staying behind while Ruuel and Sonn walked to a patch of leaves which seemed totally unthreatening until these huge greyish tentacles whipped up out of holes and tried to grab them. Ruuel cut one in two, dancing back out of the spurt of blackish blood, and then lifted himself and Sonn into the air so she could blast the tentacles with bolts of lightning. Trap-door octopus. Other than that, there was only an encounter with a handful of toothy monkey things, nothing that made Fourth Squad even break a sweat.

It was a big park and too overgrown to walk through quickly, so it was over half an hour later when we met back up at the central circle. Then the stronger Telekinesis talents – Maze, Zee and Ferus (whose first name is Glade, which I thought very ironic) – had a logistics discussion before enhancing and pulling trees from the area I thought had been fields, stacking them to form walls dividing the park into a half with trees and a half without.

You don’t just pick up a tree; they’re too firmly rooted. Instead they quiver, and rattle from an invisible wind, raining leaves and bugs, then burst upwards in showers of dirt. We kept a respectful distance after the first one, and Lohn and Sonn followed along behind looking alert as scores of critters ran in every direction. Ruuel took everyone else on a little hunting trip after something which had strayed within his detection range, and I trailed along at Maze’s elbow, trying not to fall in the holes, and thinking over how much Jules would love to be in my place.

"What are you trying not to laugh at?" Lohn asked me, when we were about a third through the field half of the park.

"Setari have great future landscape gardeners. Get Maze add nice water feature."

Maze heard that, and shot me an amused look over his shoulder, but kept concentrating on uprooting trees.

"Not our usual style of mission, true," Lohn said, surveying the destruction all around, but then giving the telekinetics a narrower glance. "More difficult, in some ways. We’re not really designed for sustained output."

That also got a look from Maze, but then he nodded and said over the interface: "This is sufficient clearance. Meet back at the centre point."

We turned and walked back, Maze, Zee and Ferus occasionally filling in the larger holes left behind, or tossing boulders over at the stacked rows of trees. They looked extremely tired, and I was starting to feel that way myself. Enhancing people never feels like effort, until I abruptly fall asleep afterwards. We sat down on the rim of the central circle and waited for the Diodel to show up and kick up a lot of dirt and fallen leaves in our faces and make us really want the shower we were all looking forward to anyway. There’s six to share between the Setari and the greysuits, and I wasn’t at all inclined to object when Zee took me along for first shot at them, and then to eat and straight to bed. Even though it wasn’t yet sunset, it had still been a long day for everyone, and I felt sorry for whichever of the Setari had to sit up during the sleep shift, since someone with Combat Sight has to be on watch at all times.

It’s still night out. I woke ridiculously early, well before everyone except the people who were on duty, but that’s given me a chance to catch up writing this. I think it will be dawn soon. I’m sitting in the common room area, which has a window giving me a lovely view of darkness. It was a little eerie walking past everyone’s pods, the covers all closed and opaque. They have good sound-proofing and I couldn’t hear breathing, though there was a hint of someone snoring.

Setari Summer Camp, day one.

Very expensive guards

It was starting to grow brighter outside when I finished writing about yesterday, so I turned out the lights in the common room (faintly chuffed that I could do something like turn the lights out – I still haven’t fully recovered from my early days in medical purgatory when I didn’t have access rights to do anything). The window wasn’t facing fully in the direction of the rising sun, but I still had a great view down a slight slope to a flat area with a large number of buildings, and then a steep rise up a hill and some very impressive buildings on top of it. It’s all very overgrown, but beautiful in the dawn, the whitestone gradually picked out in pink light. It must have been a very grand city once.

It was still only half-light outside when I had an uneasy sense of being watched and turned my head to find Ruuel standing looking at me. I’ve no idea how long he’d been there.

"Is watching the dawn a custom of your home?" he asked, coming over to where I was sitting on a window seat arrangement before one of the long viewing windows: my favourite spot on the ship.

"Think I’ve seen more Muinan dawns than Earth’s." I turned back to the window, since that was the easiest way to deal with how good he was looking just then. "Generally stay up a lot later on Earth, so don’t get up as early. Is better when you can hear the birds."

He didn’t say anything, so I risked a quick glance at him. Ruuel has a way of gazing off at things – maybe using Sights, maybe just thinking – wearing this distant, contemplative expression which makes me want to stare at him in turn. I hastily looked back outside, and said: "More sensible roofs here."

"Sensible?"

"The trees are what Earth calls deciduous – they’re losing their leaves in Autumn – so chances good it snows in this area. Flat roofs like those at Pandora must have needed a lot of clearing in Winter. These almost all seem to be sloped." Though I guess, since they were built out of whitestone, the weight of snow on the roof mightn’t be a big problem. "Couldn’t work out what they did for heating and cooking, either. Nothing that looked like a chimney or smoke vent in those houses. Only found a couple of kilns or ovens and those were separate from the other buildings. Could find very little information on Tare about what daily life was like on Muina."

"We have lost almost all that we were." He didn’t sound particularly upset, but it made me wonder just how much the Nuran had gotten under his skin, saying that Tarens don’t even know what Setari means. And almost as if he knew what I was thinking, he added: "If we are to believe the one calling himself Inisar, we are not to be trusted with the past."

"Nurans as human as Tarens or people from Earth. Chances are just as fallible and ready do stupid things."

"An observation almost equal to Tare mostly treating you as civilised people should."

That made me turn around, but he was already walking away. And of course after that I spent the entire day thinking about him and being stupidly aware of everything he did, which was annoying. Being assigned to Fourth Squad is giving me way too many opportunities to look at Kaoren Ruuel, and my resolution to just sit back and enjoy the scenery isn’t all that easy to keep.

Otherwise it was an uneventful day for me. First Squad, minus Alay, roamed about killing Ionoth and mapping the immediate area, while Fourth Squad escorted the greysuits about as they uncovered and looked over a small pavilion in the park, and then moved on to the buildings nearest to the ship. The greysuits switch constantly between eager excitement, nervous glances at all that sky without ceiling, and avoiding creepy-crawlies. All of us were slathered in a very effective insect repellant, but every so often someone would turn over a rock and try not to shriek.

I stayed with Fourth Squad, watching Ruuel not reacting to the way the leader of the greysuits, Islen Duffen, made it clear she wasn’t interested in hearing the observations of Setari Sight talents. I guess it’s true they don’t have any formal archaeological or historical training, but Place Sight is a powerful tool, even factoring in the amount of time it’s been since anything except animals and Ionoth were here to leave traces of self behind.

If Ruuel cared, he didn’t show it. Ferus thought it was funny, and Auron doesn’t seem to let much get under his skin. Halla and Eyse were briefly annoyed, then decided to look on the light side. Sonn was fuming, but Ruuel sent her to do a patrol of the outside of the building with Halla, and she’d cooled off by the time she came back. I did school work, and read books, and thought about the enormity of cataloguing an entire city. Even the initial recording of sites, while looking for any kind of writing, will take months. The entire planet will take centuries. Archaeologist is definitely going to be a booming career choice – KOTIS didn’t have any on staff until Pandora was founded and Islen Duffen is a brand new recruit, who will ultimately be coordinating an ever-increasing horde of minions if the reclamation of Muina goes to plan.

Fortunately, once the immediate area is a little clearer, fewer Setari will be devoted to babysitting. And, no matter what Islen Duffen’s opinion of the value of their observations, Fourth Squad’s more likely to be able to detect and analyse strange Muinan installations than any of the greysuits.

And Ruuel has some vestige of a sense of humour and I’m liking him more than ever. Damn.

Friday, April 4

Chipping away at the whitestone mountain

Today was First Squad’s turn to baby-sit greysuits, while Fourth Squad continued the wider area patrol. Our survey site was chosen because the buildings in this part of the city are large and suggest importance, and the Setari are systematically going to each one, doing a circuit of the exterior, and then looking inside. The greysuits aren’t very keen on the Setari going inside, so they’re only allowed to do more than look from the door if they’re dealing with Ionoth.

I guess there were bones everywhere, but it was only when we went into some rooms which had been partially closed off that it was really brought home to me that this must have been one of the places where everyone abruptly dropped dead. Where, most likely, the Ddura had killed everyone. It was a lot harder to think of it as a big, lonely energy-dog after seeing so many grey and dusty skeletons lying where the people who lived here had fallen.

Yesterday First Squad were thoroughly tired by afternoon, and this time Fourth Squad were starting to look worn by lunchtime. They didn’t do that much fighting compared to clearing the spaces, but wandering around constantly combat alert, and using Place Sight when they thought it appropriate, gets pretty draining after hour upon hour. Setari missions are usually two to three Earth hours, not all-day assignments. They stayed typical Fourth Squad, practically talking in abbreviations while on duty, but I think part of the strain was the place itself, by the history and the deaths of more than memory monsters. When we finished our second patrol loop they were more subdued than businesslike.

Fortunately they’re growing a little less formal back on ship, and I ended up sharing a dinner table with Lohn and Mara, Mori Eyse, and the two junior-most greysuits, Katha and Dase, who were very interested in Earth’s early civilisations. We moved to the common room afterwards and I tried not to feel too pressured when my attempts to dredge up memories of archaeological expeditions and discoveries on Earth attracted a larger and larger audience. I talked about Macchu Piccu and the discovery of Tutankamen’s tomb and even Islen Duffen was interested, though she acted tremendously disapproving and asked lots of Devil’s Advocate-type questions. It’s so strange to be the only person who knows any of this stuff, and to have my rambling memories treated as important. I wish I’d paid a lot more attention in all my classes.

No-one stayed up too late, though, which was good for me since I had been walking all over the city as well. It’s a little hard to tell how much I’m effected by enhancing, but I know I am now, though I wasn’t dropping with exhaustion today the way I had been after all that tree-uprooting. Time to go to sleep now, and to try not to think too much about Ruuel asleep two pods over.

Saturday, April 5

Dase

It took me half the day to figure out that Dase (Dase Canlan, one of the junior archaeologists) was trying to flirt with me. Flirt seriously, I mean, not the teasing-flirting that Nils from Second Squad seems to do almost unconsciously. Dase and Katha had asked Islen Duffen if they could explain to me some of what they were doing and rather to my surprise she agreed, so I had some lessons on field archaeology. I do wonder where Taren archaeologists usually do their archaeology – there can’t be that much left of the early days of Tare’s settlement that doesn’t have mega-buildings sitting on it.

Before I twigged, I was just enjoying having some people to chat to who were willing to be not on duty every second of the day. It was only when we went in for lunch that Dase switched more to asking about my family and how I felt about the things I was doing on Tare that it filtered through to me that he was smiling at me a lot. He wasn’t pushy or sitting too close or anything; it was just that kind of vibe.

Looking back, it’s funny how disconcerted I felt. It’s not as if I’ve never dated. And Dase isn’t some damp mouth-breather. Not so fantastically fit as any of the Setari, unsurprisingly, but with this cute, flopping-into-his-eyes fringe. Twenty-two or three, possibly, which still seems too adult to me, but I guess isn’t so much older than me. He’d probably score a 7 on the Orlando Bloom-meter, and is a pretty nice guy. A bit earnest.

It’s not easy to decide how to react to a guy when you know people are watching. But the main hurdle was that Orlando Bloom would score about a 7 on my Kaoren Ruuel-meter. And Ruuel was sitting at the next table. Fortunately facing the opposite direction, though I held no hope that he wasn’t sparing a fraction of his attention to the "psychological aspects". I am part of the Setari’s duties.

I dealt with Dase by asking Katha a lot of questions, always keeping the conversation group-focused, acting completely oblivious to any kind of undertone. Hell, for all I know he was just being friendly and I was reading way too much into everything. But I did spend the rest of the day trying to work out how I would feel if I wasn’t so fixated on Ruuel.

That wasn’t easy, and I had an annoying internal argument about whether or not I should try and get to know Dase better, because it was silly to push a perfectly nice guy away in favour of a one-sided crush. But that’s how it is. The thing with Ruuel will either fade or it won’t, but right now there’s only one person I want flirting with me.

For all that the mind boggles at the idea of Ruuel flirting.

Sunday, April 6

Umbrella of the Apocalypse

Ruuel woke me up just on dawn with an override and a typically curt text message: "Aft lock."

Not sure if it was an emergency, I released my pod’s lid, making my nanosuit grow back its feet and gloves as quickly as I could manage. I did bring a bag of normal clothes along, but it’s simpler to wear the suit to bed precisely because of mornings like this one, though I guess I mainly wear it because I would have felt embarrassed slopping around in pyjamas while everyone else was in uniform.

Mara was with Ruuel and one of the greensuits, standing on the small ramp down to the trampled dirt outside. Ruuel touched my arm and then turned to gaze into the half-light.

"Possibly just a false alarm," Mara said, squeezing my shoulder in apologetic greeting. "Combat Sight is giving me nothing specific, but I can’t escape the sense that something’s there."

Mara’s turn for the late watch. She’d woken Ruuel, who in turn had woken me because he was no more certain. I looked out at the hazy shapes of the stacked trees and the endless stretch of whitestone buildings. The air was sharply crisp, with a fragment of breeze rattling leaves. Otherwise, nothing.

"No birds," I noted. That early, bird-calls should have been just starting up, but it was like the city was holding its breath.

Ruuel glanced back at me, then nodded at Mara. "Something is coming. It’s still in near-space." He set off a full alert alarm and headed back into the ship.

"Go quickly and grab something to eat," Mara told me, after a rather wry look at Ruuel’s back. "There’s only one thing any of us are likely to be able to sense while it’s still in near-space. This isn’t going to be easy."

A massive. That’s what Ruuel said, as he brought all the Setari and the greensuits and Tsel Onara into a channel and gave them one of his terse briefings.

"We’ll retreat," Tsel Onara said immediately.

"No time," Maze said. "If we can feel it, it’s right on the verge of emerging. The Diodel isn’t manoeuvrable enough to avoid an attack during take-off, even if we could manage that immediately."

I’d run, not to get something to eat, but to go to the toilet and to wash my face. Maze ordered both squads outside even as Mara said: "It’s emerging. Mark seven, almost on top of us."

Eight squads. That’s what I was remembering as I ran back to the aft lock. The last time they’d fought a massive they’d needed eight squads, and Maze’s wife had died. We didn’t even have any of the big hitter squads, and for all I knew how much more powerful I made the Setari, I still felt bug-small when I reached the ramp and felt what was above us.

Not with psychic senses. Felt in the way you do when there’s something really big moving, like when the Litara is flying overhead. The thing was standing beside the park, not directly over us, and was bigger than the Litara. It had to be one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen – a black and bulky central section low to the ground, but with two twisty sub-bodies raised far higher up on either side by scads of long spindly legs which reminded me of the collapsed spokes of an umbrella. I watched one of these reach with a lazily deceptive speed and pluck something from the ground below. It was too far to see just what it was, but the massive moved it over to the central body and dropped it on top.

"We’ll draw it away from the Diodel first," Maze said. "Spel, Gainer, Eyse, Halla, remain with the ship on alert for accompaniment."

"First assessment is that it will be resistant to elementals," Ruuel said calmly, and gave me one of the molasses food bars which were standard mission fare. He had a handful of them, was passing them out.

Maze grimaced, but didn’t seem particularly surprised, setting the enhancement rotation as he touched my arm. "We’ll go over the top," he said. "Don’t underestimate the reach of those arms."

Eight people. Instead of eight squads, they were going to try and fight the thing with eight people. But still, even though they were looking super-serious, they weren’t acting like they thought it was impossible, so when Auron hitched me into his side all I did was hook my arm obediently across his shoulders.

We went very high very quick, the cold air making my eyes stream. There was a crunching noise below, and I realised it was one of the buildings the massive’s main body was resting on. Even whitestone couldn’t stand up to the weight of it. After one brief glance where I saw that the top of it looked like a massive Venus flytrap, I didn’t look down again.

"Higher – we’re in reach," Ruuel said, and we shot up abruptly even as some of the umbrella spokes came toward us. Maze set the tip of one, a horrid fingery arrangement, shrivelling and burning and Ruuel said: "Sonn," which prompted her to drop a ball of lightning down into the mouth, and then we were on the far side.

"The large building at mark nine," Maze ordered, and we dropped down to the roof of a long, single-story building, moving way too fast for my comfort. The fact that I have to be carried instead of levitated makes whizzing about scary.

"Swoops at twelve mark," Ruuel said. "Fast approach."

"Your targets Kettara, Senez." Maze re-enhanced, starting the cycle over. "How much reaction to that lightning?"

Ruuel’s eyes were fully open as he gazed back at the massive. "No more than pain."

It was moving toward us, surprising me by being a lot quicker and less awkward than something that big and weird should surely be. Off in the direction Mara and Lohn had gone was the white flash of Lohn’s Light wall, and a gargling wail before some heavy things crashed and skidded in the street below.

"Focus debris damage on the join points between the centre body and the outliers," Ruuel continued. "Then debris and elementals on the outliers. They are its weapons."

"Right side first," Maze said, wasting no time in pulling a boulder out of the ground below and hurling it at the massive. It fell short: we were too far away. Even Ferus, who has the strongest Telekinesis of the two squads, couldn’t quite reach.

"Haul above," Maze ordered, and he, Zee and Ferus gathered everything loose and heavy from the immediate area – trees and rocks and chunks of broken whitestone – and zipped upwards.

"Retreat back four streets," Ruuel ordered, because the massive was uncomfortably no longer too far away. Auron lifted me, Mara, Lohn and Sonn backward to the roof of a two-story building up the hill, landing just as the others began hurling things downward with maximum strength.

The massive didn’t like that. It made a low, deep noise and stopped moving as its right segment was almost completely severed. As the three telekinetics dipped back to the ground to gather more missiles, the massive’s two outer segments lowered all their spindly umbrella arm-legs until they were about the same height as the main body. The right segment didn’t seem like it was going to drop dead or stop moving just because it was no longer fully joined, although both of the segments had pulled down completely into defensive bunches.

The tiny constellation of the Setari rose again, moving to attack the other segment, which seemed to be tilting so that it faced in my group’s direction.

"Scatter!"

I gasped, wrenched by abrupt and rapid movement. Ruuel had stepped behind me, slid both arms under mine, and gone straight up. He’d brought Mara, Lohn and Sonn with us, and Auron followed after a moment’s shock. Ruuel was moving as quickly as he could fly and I slid helplessly down, clamping my arms over his and trying not to panic until he bound our suits and I stopped sliding, just as a wave of purplish light washed out the dawn, filling the air with the scent of burning metal.

Both of the outer segments had blasted us, one up at Maze’s group, the other direct at mine. We’d managed to move in time, Auron just barely clearing the upper edge of the purple, but the interface showed me Zee’s location plummeting in a way which was absolutely wrong.

Maze and Ferus dove after her. Ruuel, breathing hard from the effort of moving everyone so quickly, said: "Swoops from mark four. Auron, take over carriage and bring us rapidly over it and down. Sonn, full power into the detached part."

Ferus had caught Zee. He and Maze paused together, then Maze said, voice tight: "Rendezvous with the others."

Lohn took care of the swoops behind us as Sonn dropped another ball of lightning down onto the damaged segment. We descended rapidly, meeting together on another roof. Zee was limp and still, but I knew from the mission display that she was alive. Ruuel let me go and turned to watch the massive, saying: "It’s reorienting."

"Restart enhancement rotation," Maze said, brushing a finger against my arm. "Looks like the second ball of lightning has had some impact. We’ll work on detaching the other segment. Keep moving. Spel, join us with Gainer and Halla."

Ferus passed Zee to Auron, enhanced, and then he and Maze took off again.

"We’ll work on finishing off the injured segment," Ruuel said. "Kettara, use Light element. The rest, whatever minor seems most likely to damage it." Lohn and Mara re-enhanced, and I went back to being Auron’s carting-about problem. I was too caught up in the fight and worrying about Zee to spare much attention to the whole grabbed-by-Ruuel thing. I’ve been thinking about it plenty since. He was going all-out, at his limit of Levitation and Telekinesis talents, and I could feel his chest move as he gasped for air. If I hadn’t been panicking, I probably would have enjoyed that a lot.

The damaged segment didn’t seem able to produce the purple beam any more, or didn’t have a chance before we rained Light and Fire and Ice down on it. The other segment shot at Maze and Ferus, but forewarned they were able to dodge and pelt it with big chunks of the buildings it had been tromping over. The rest of the Setari swung around and toasted that side as well.

The centre section was still alive, though, and still moving, crushing more of the city in the process. We all dropped down to another roof, very close to it, meeting up with Ketzaren, Alay and Halla.

"Take Annan back to the ship," Maze told Ketzaren. "Spel, enhanced Sonics on the main body."

Alay nodded, taking my hand and squeezing it: I’ve no doubt I was looking wide-eyed and pale. We all moved back behind her then, with the ship behind us, and I found out that Alay’s Sonic talent is a really scary thing. Like Ketzaren’s Wind, it’s something that takes her a long time to build to a seriously destructive level, but even with our ears covered and not being the focus of her attack, my bones started aching. The massive began to wail and rock, and every bird and animal in its direction which hadn’t fled already burst from cover and ran.

It died unspectacularly. I expect if it had anything recognisable as a head, blood would have run from its eyes and nose and ears. As it was, it just stopped moving and wailing and settled down on the crushed remains of the buildings below. Alay stopped shredding our ears and let out her breath. She turned her head and just for a moment I saw her face. Naked. I know that Maze lost his wife in the last massive attack, and now I know that Alay must have lost someone too.

"Escort Ionoth are still emerging," Ruuel said, and added either to me or to our audience on the Diodel: "Massives are usually trailed by other Ionoth, particularly swoop roamers."

"We’ll pause here for recovery and then clear," Maze said.

"Pandora control is sending reinforcements," Tsel Onara added, voice crisp but with just a hint of relief, or respect. Massives are well-named.

Most of the Setari began eating the energy bars Ruuel had handed out earlier. I had mine in a pocket, but ignored it, for all I was really hungry. I figured it wouldn’t be that long before we went back to the Diodel and had some food which didn’t leave a tarry-sweet aftertaste in my mouth.

Lohn came over and gave my shoulders a squeeze. "Remember when you asked if enhancement was worth all the complication of rotations?" he asked. "This is what it comes to – the difference between dozens of us bouncing attacks off one of these things, or a handful with enough impact to penetrate its defences."

I smiled a bit weakly, feeling shakier than I usually do after working with the Setari, and asked: "How bad is Zee injured?"

"Her vitals are steady," Maze said, coming across to give me a quick captain-survey. "The attack seemed to be electricity-based, intended to stun prey and not strong enough to kill a healthy person. Though it would be another matter if we’d not caught her." He gave Ferus an approving glance.

"Surion."

There was something in Ruuel’s tone which made us all look at him, and then follow his gaze to a building far up the hill. Two dark figures were watching us. Distance and the thin light of dawn made detail unclear, but I knew them anyway. Cruzatch.

I glanced at Maze, but he was being pure captain, surveying the watching pair before saying: "Any others?"

"Not that I’ve sensed."

"Out of range of an immediate kill." Maze frowned. "The nearest gate to that location is one street beyond. We’ll feint a retreat back toward the ship, then split and attempt to circle and catch them between us."

Ruuel nodded, and the Setari broke into two groups, Auron tucking me under his arm again. They were very intent, grim. I guess, since Maze thinks the Cruzatch are organised and actively working against the Setari, he didn’t want to give them a chance to report back.

When we split, Fourth Squad headed straight for the gate while First took a swift, circling loop toward the Cruzatch. One of them launched itself at First, while the other did as Maze had predicted and went for the nearest gate.

I’d not seen a Cruzatch fighting before. There’s an eerie similarity to the Setari in their speed and the way they grow weapons – though the Cruzatch Ruuel fought created long claws from its fingertips rather than a sword from its arm. It was very fast, too, if no match for Ruuel, especially Ruuel enhanced. The thing I hated, though, was the way it almost seemed to be getting off on fighting him, like it knew it would just come back if he won.

"Clear the emergents and rendezvous back at the Diodel," Maze ordered, and we spent another half hour chasing down swoops and one of those stilt things. Then it was hot showers and hot food and First and Fourth Squad were just about recovered from their wake-up call when two shuttles from Pandora arrived. It had a bunch of greysuits who wanted to investigate the massive, and more greensuits, and Ninth Squad, which I’d had nothing to do with before.

I took the opportunity of everyone being distracted by their arrival to go see Zee. She was still unconscious, looking very crumpled and bruised for such a tall, fit woman. The doctor’s letting me sit with her, and they think she should wake up soon, but I’ve managed to write this entire diary entry without her so much as twitching.

Setari Musical Chairs

Zee woke up. I’d fallen asleep – one of those post-too-much-enhancement power naps I’m getting used to taking – and when I opened my eyes she was lying on her side watching me.

"Just a few moments too slow," she said, voice dragging a little. "Nasty shock to the system. I’ll be joining Alay in rehabilitation for a while."

"Alay’s nearly better," I said, and squeezed her hand. "Dodge faster next time. Scared me half to death."

Zee smiled and mumbled something I didn’t understand. She was pretty out of it. I watched her failing to stay awake, and for a while wished I was still living with the Lents, that I’d never seen any of the Setari after being rescued. They live such dangerous lives, and the chances of all of them surviving is so slim. That may be another reason the Setari as a group are so competitive and distant with each other outside of their squads: having too many friends would mean having too many people you care about constantly in danger.

That was after midday, while the two extra shuttles were still here. The greysuits wanted to record as much detail of the massive as they could before it vanished, which it did a couple of hours later. The vanishing thing really worries me, actually: it makes all this a little too like a computer game for me to be entirely certain that the nutter-in-a-straightjacket option isn’t the right explanation for everything I do and see. Monsters that respawn infinitely, whose bodies despawn after they’re killed. And me being some mysterious touchstone thing with bunches of incredibly hot people looking after me. It’s all a little too wish-fulfilment.

I would really hate it if I was insane. Though if this is a psychotic episode, at least it came on suddenly and doesn’t make me face up to the fragmentation of my own mind. It would be far worse to be insane only some of the time.

But if this was all my own private fantasy, I think I would make more people like me. The captain of Ninth Squad is called Desa Kaeline, and she has wonderful smoky eyelashes and unusually pale skin for a Taren. And was extremely correct and polite to me in a way that suggested that I gave her a headache but she didn’t want to admit it. And there was another girl in her squad, Kahl Anya, who gave me this absolute viper-look. I’ve got to stop reviewing my own logs: it was only a quick glance and I wouldn’t have caught it at all if I hadn’t looked back over the reinforcements leaving just before sunset.

They took First Squad away with them, and left Ninth Squad behind. Today sucked.

Monday, April 7

Team Drama Queen

Ruuel made us all get up early to do enhancement testing and training, since Ninth Squad has never worked with me at all. Setari pecking order seems to be based on active duty seniority, so when the squads work together, the captain of the squad with the smaller number is treated as being in charge. Ninth Squad doesn’t seem to resent this, though I noticed during this morning’s session that Ruuel had Ninth do a lot more repetition of the multiple-squad enhancement rotation and the intricacies of carrying me around than he bothered with when Fourth Squad was testing. I don’t know whether that’s because he thinks they’re slower on the uptake, or he just isn’t sure another squad member would ask to go over things again if they needed to. It’s pretty clear squads hate looking bad in front of other squads.

Ninth Squad is another generalist squad: a little more big-hitting than First, since the older Setari for the most part aren’t quite as powerful as the younger. Desa Kaeline turned out to be easy enough to work with; maybe she simply did have a headache when she was introduced to me yesterday. The rest of the squad seemed to settle into two groups: Kahl Anya and her two best buddies, and two people who really don’t like Kahl Anya. I began to see why Kaeline might be prone to headaches.

Not that they were squabbling or glaring at each other. I doubt they’d do that where Fourth could see. They just had this tendency to stand in two different groups, and Anya and her groupies would exchange little smirks, while the other two looked unhappy. I was glad my ride in Ninth was one of the non-groupies – a bean-pole guy named Rebar Dolas. Other than an undertone of being in a bit of a mood, he seemed nice. He asked me where I prefer he put his hands, anyway, gave me a sympathetic smile, and kept an eye on my reaction when we changed directions abruptly.

I was pretty tired. Napping half the morning yesterday meant I’d stayed up very late, doing school work in my pod since I hadn’t felt like chatting. Fortunately Fourth Squad was on babysitting duty, so I didn’t have to walk half the day. Islen Duffen kept making aggrieved comments about all the damage to the buildings, but she wasn’t blaming the Setari particularly.

I sat with Glade and Mori at lunch and dinner. I’m liking Mori more and more. She has a wry sense of humour, which she mostly only indulges when Ruuel isn’t around, and she and Glade both watch The Hidden War devotedly, just to pick apart the things that don’t make sense. They say that some of the characters who show up later in the series are based on leaked details of the real Setari. I’m still only up to the second year of it: I like it, but I’ve found I can only stand watching it sporadically, and prefer Super Sight Six. The Hidden War is often quite a dark show, and just now I don’t want to think about how First has had two close calls in a handful of weeks.

I’m glad I’m settling into Fourth, that I’m able to chat and laugh with some of them, because otherwise I’d feel pretty alone without First, dealing with Ninth. Of course, no-one’s about to discuss Ninth Squad with me. By this stage I know to not even consider asking. I don’t know what Anya has against me. I figure the best thing I can do is just not be interested in the opinions of people who’ve never even spoken to me.

Nor is anyone willing to discuss whether the Cruzatch could really have driven that massive to attack us. People are discussing it, but the idea makes everyone desperately uneasy, and they shut up when I’m nearby with my ever-present second level monitoring.

I keep thinking of Zee, falling out of the sky.

Tuesday, April 8

Chinese Mountains

Halfway between midnight and dawn I woke feeling fretful and uneasy. I thought maybe I’d had a nightmare, and lay for a while not able to sleep, then eventually got up to go to the bathroom. The pods have quite a lot of shielding on them, much like my room back on Tare, and it was only after I’d opened mine that I started to properly register what had woken me.

It was the "mmmnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn" noise, the one I associated with the Ddura attacking or hunting, but very far away. I could barely hear it, and spent the time it took to go to the bathroom and then to get a drink to decide whether or not it was just my imagination. I’d been told I had to immediately report if I heard the Ddura, but hearing a noise which might be the Ddura in the middle of the night meant my own interpretation of immediately. Especially when the person on night watch was the prima donna from Ninth Squad.

Still, I was assigned to Fourth Squad and all Anya would be able to do, beyond act like I was wasting her time, was report to the captains. So, with a squeamish mix of feelings, I sent Ruuel an override saying: "Can hear Ddura."

He didn’t treat me to any sleep-fuelled incoherencies, responding within maybe ten seconds with: "At what distance?"

"Very far away," I said, watching as his pod cover lifted and he sat up. Facing away from me, fortunately, so I could enjoy the sight of him with his uniform converted to a tank top and knee-length arrangement. He scrubbed a hand over his close-cut hair, his uniform starting to return to standard configuration, and I looked away, feeling oddly uncomfortable. "Can only just hear," I added, out loud this time instead of over the interface. "It making noise it makes when it attack things."

"Outside," was all of his response, and I followed him to the aft lock.

The Setari on watch is posted with a greensuit just inside the lock; there’s seats, and they don’t have to stand, but usually seem to be. Anya and the greensuit were both standing, and the greensuit looked like she had a headache, heh.

"Any movement?" Ruuel asked, and they both said no, tensing because we wouldn’t have been there if nothing was happening.

Ruuel opened the outer hatch and lifted us both on to the roof of the ship. He used straight Levitataion, which I much prefer to being hauled about clinging on to people, but the Setari can only lift me directly if they’re not enhanced.

"Try to gauge a direction while I arrange clearance," he said, and then I guess sent an override in turn to the Diodel's captain.

It’s really hard to work out the direction of a distant noise. Shadowed by Ruuel, I walked around the roof of the ship, trying to ignore the chilly wind, and eventually decided that I could hear it best on the aft end. By that time, a couple of greensuits were preparing the ship’s transports for a night-time excursion, and Fourth and Ninth were all up and ready.

There’s a lot of different types of smaller transports, and the name of the two the Diodel carried would roughly translate to skimmers. They hold eight people and are more complex than the flat, hovering sleds we used crossing the lake at Pandora, with low seats wrapped around the edge and a flat area in the middle: flying rafts. No visible controls or console or anything like that. They can only go about forty feet up, but scudded along at a brisk pace.

Each skimmer had two greensuits, and five Setari, with two of Ninth Squad left at the Diodel, including one unimpressed drama queen. I sat up front opposite the greensuit, feeling very silly, and we flew in the direction I’d indicated. I was picturing the reaction if I’d chosen the wrong direction, but as we got closer I could tell it was more to one side, and re-directed the greensuit, and kept making corrections the louder the Ddura became.

Nurioth sprawls over two rivers which drain into another fresh-water lake – the westernmost of a chain of huge lakes including Pandora’s lake. After a while, as the Ddura grew louder, I stopped feeling so self-conscious about playing native guide, and enjoyed looking at the stars and the reflections in the lake and the spooky gloom of the city. After we left it behind us, I was expecting to arrive at another of the small settlements marked by the circle symbols on roofs, but there was just forest beside the lake, and small mountains which reminded me of those pictures you see on old Chinese pictures – conical pointed arrangements.

"Very near here," I said, looking back confusedly. "Think we passed." There was no sign of any settlement, just the gleam of an old road.

"Take us lower," Ruuel said to the greensuit, then touched my arm and added to Auron and Mori: "Try to locate another of the communication devices."

The moon was three-quarters full above us as we dropped to nearly ground-level among the steep mountainettes. All three of the path-finders turned slowly in the same direction, glanced at each other and nodded. We moved back the way we came, until we were in the middle of a triangle formed by three of the conical mountains, with the lake to our left and patches of whitestone paving poking through the dirt and plants beneath. There was something distinctly unnatural about the shadowy near-vertical slopes of the mountains around us, the moonlight picking out too-regular shapes among bright-edged shadows.

"We need more light," said Ormeral, the sole greysuit who’d been sent along.

Ruuel said: "Halla," and she obediently sent a huge Pillar of flame into the air above us, startling a flock of birds (or bats) into flight and revealing large stone doors surrounded by decorative carving, firmly sealed and very impressive. Before the flame died away I saw that all three mountainettes had the same sort of entrance.

"Set down by the lake," Ruuel said. We were well out of what he’d said was normal interface range, but I guess the skimmers would include communication links, since he got that talking-to-someone-else expression and, when we set down, said: "The Diodel will relocate, and we’ll wait for daylight. What’s the status of the Ddura?"

"Still hunting." It was loud, but not as loud as it was on the surface at Pandora, let alone at the communication platform.

Ruuel nodded. "We’ll scout for gate locations external to the site while we wait."

He split us into two groups, putting me in the "sit in the skimmers and don’t move" half, and then divided the rest into pairs who vanished off into the night. Pairs meant he didn’t sense a major threat nearby, which I guess isn’t that surprising since the Ddura had been hunting through the area for the last half hour. Ormeral began taking readings using a bulky machine he’d lugged along, looking tremendously excited. I watched the lake.

This is such a beautiful world. I pretended, just for a few minutes, that I was here on a family holiday. Mum and the aunts and the cousins, maybe even Dad. We’d fish, and only Nick would catch anything. Mum would go off on a long rambling walk, and bring back a huge bouquet of interesting leaves and flowers. Jules would be everywhere, complaining half the time of X-Box deprivation, and then would fall out of a tree, scrape every limb raw, and be all pleased with himself. Maybe I’d go canoeing – I’ve never tried that, but it looks like it might be fun. We’d have a campfire and cook the fish, with potatoes in the coals, and tell ghost stories. Everyone would argue just a little, and laugh a lot, and be comfortable and relaxed and no matter what planet it was I would belong because that’s what being with your family does.

Thinking about all this of course made me feel intensely miserable. I was surprised when Auron patted my shoulder and when I looked at him he gave me this shy, sympathetic smile. I smiled back, appreciating the gesture, which was uncharacteristic for him: he’s even more taciturn than Ruuel, though in a very different way. Ruuel had swapped him for Glade as my primary babysitter pretty early on, maybe just because he’s so tall it makes it easier for him to tuck me under his arm. I’m more comfortable clinging to Auron, anyway. Glade, though he was always correct, was I think endlessly tempted to tease me about it.

Halla and Sonn are still pretty formal, but I think even they accept me as a temporary part of Fourth Squad; they’re certainly not hostile. Mori and Glade are becoming friends, and Auron (Par) sort of comes as an added extra with Glade. And their acceptance and growing willingness to talk to me makes it a lot easier to be around Ruuel so much. I really don’t enjoy the way I feel about him a lot of the time. Too vulnerable.

The arrival of the Diodel interrupted all my introspection, and now I’m back on the ship and everyone’s sitting around waiting for it to be dawn. One of the main things all this exploration is for is to find information about the Pillars, and I guess Ruuel has decided there might be some here. This means the place is going to be searched really carefully, with especial emphasis on not accidentally standing on vital bits of evidence. Most of it will be inside the mountains, though, so I find it funny that they’re waiting for dawn just so they can sift through the debris outside the doors.

I think I’ll try and get a little more sleep now that I’m no longer so keyed up.

Seeing too much

Mori woke me around mid-morning. "We’ve finally reached the stage where we’re going to open the doors," she said. "Or try to – they seem to be a complicated arrangement."

A hot shower and breakfast were first on my schedule. I was surprised to realise that all of Fourth Squad had gone back to sleep as well, but of course it made sense to not have the ship’s entire Setari complement sitting around waiting for dawn, and then watching the greysuits take pictures and measurements and search the overgrown paved area for artefacts.

As I was finishing breakfast, a vibration ran through the ship and on cue Mori reappeared, hair damp. "That’s the Litara. Initial scans have shown there’s an extensive underground complex here. Between that, the presence of a communication platform, and the fact that the doors appear to be charged with aether, this is going to be a major site, perhaps even our second settlement. Let’s go look before we’re overwhelmed by reinforcements."

"Why expedition in Nurioth so relatively few people?" I asked. "Such a large city; barely chipped the edges."

"Well, our primary purpose there was to find something like this place," Mori said. "The archaeological survey and analysis of the city – all the cities – will take decades. What work was done in Nurioth will be useful, of course, but this whole expedition was focused toward finding active Lantaren technology, particularly more platform towns. Not only because we want to analyse such technology, but because we want to concentrate the archaeological analysis on these sites in the hopes that the builders left records of the Pillar construction."

We’d reached the port lock, where the rest of Fourth Squad was waiting on a sled. I really don’t know why they get themselves ferried to shore instead of flying: some kind of protocol? Or just careful conservation of energy when on duty. I’ve come to realise how prone to exhaustion the Setari are.

"I don’t care to guess how long it would have taken us to uncover this, though," Mori continued, as we started across. "It’s not something aerial surveys would easily detect, and far out of our Sight range."

"Seems different style of decorative tradition, too," I said, staring ahead to what I could see of the carved face of one of the mountains. Everyone was quiet and tense as the sled left the lake and slid smoothly between the curving base of the steep-sided mountains.

It reminded me vaguely of – I’ve forgotten the name – that building which is carved into the face of a gorge. It’s not only the size of the thing which makes an impression, it’s the frame of natural rock, in this case not of sheer, baked yellow stone, but of grey and black rocks, worn into rounded piles and heavily decorated with lichen, ferns, shrubs and small trees sprawling down and sideways. A big contrast to the clean, curving lines of pointed arches, maybe twelve or fifteen metres up to the tip. Between a simple inner and outer border were carvings with a faint resemblance to Mayan decorations or even Celtic knot work. The doors were rectangular, not pointed, and the space above their lintel and the point of the arch was full of figurative carvings.

The three mountainettes were close, like a circle of people holding hands. The gap in the centre wasn’t more than a couple of hundred metres across, a lop-sided circle which the greysuits had been busy sectioning with stakes exactly as you’d see at a dig on Earth, except they projected an electronic grid in the interface rather than using string. A few areas had been cleared, exposing circular paths and a tumble of whitestone in the centre which looked like something had fallen on it. They’d made a lot of progress in the last few hours, obviously intent on ensuring nothing was trampled underfoot when people tried to examine and access the doorways.

Kaeline from Ninth met us at a small tent which had been set up just outside this central area, and there was a lot of talk of readings and measurements and where we were allowed to walk. I stood staring at the triangle of carving above each of the doors. Each had a central figure of the head and shoulders of a person – the face was androgynous, idealised, and the arms outstretched, something trickling from cupped hands down on little people below. God-kings. The Egyptians had them and I’m willing to bet that’s what the Lantarens who built this place considered themselves.

Things started getting crowded then, as the reinforcements from the Litara began arriving. I was surprised to see Tsur Selkie among them, though he seemed to be playing observer rather than person in charge. As soon as he showed up all the Setari forgot how to talk and focused on standing very straight, while Islen Duffen called a halt to her team’s work and we all gathered near the tent to discuss what would happen next.

The person in charge was a woman called Tsen Helada (so many Ts titles), a whip-thin, narrow-eyed lady with streaks of grey in frizzy black hair, and an air of barely suppressed energy. She reeled off lists of detail, about how the greensuits would examine the nearby area and decide the site of the settlement while Islen Duffen would continue to coordinate the archaeological side, and a man called Islen Tezart would manage investigation into what amounted to psychic technology. We were to consider the site dangerous, not only because of Ionoth and aether, but because we had no idea what the potential dangers of active Lantaren technology might be. And we were to above all else be thorough, to miss nothing.

Islen Tezart had a very different attitude toward Sight talents compared to Islen Duffen. He wanted the Place Sight talents to assist in the investigation of the doors, which didn’t seem to have any moving parts. He was hoping they might be able to see a way to unlock it without damaging it, or discover if it was something which could be commanded using Ena manipulation, like the communication platforms.

More dullness after this, with everyone standing around talking and waiting while different machines took readings. Ninth Squad was off being guard-like, and Tsur Selkie was with Fourth, watching silently. I kept staring up at the image of the person above the door and thinking of that Shelley poem, Ozymandias.

"Is there something familiar about the carving?" Tsur Selkie asked me while they were performing the last of the machine scans. "Does this have a correlation to structures on your world?"

I shook my head. "Doesn’t really match anything. If wasn’t for communication device inside, would think this was tomb though."

"Tomb?"

I’d had to use the English word. Tarens cremate their dead and toss the ashes into the ocean. Necessary given their space issues, and better than the soylent green option. They have a word for grave, but not for a building for dead bodies, which I guess means that the Muinans didn’t use tombs either. "Cross between monument to the dead and a grave," I said. "There was Earth people called Egyptians, built huge pyramids and sealed bodies of their god-kings inside."

"God-kings." Tsur Selkie glanced up at the carving, at the sightless face gazing at us from the past. Not even Tsur Selkie could win a staring competition with a statue, though, so he looked away.

They finished the last of the machine-based tests then, and moved on to trying Place Sight. Place Sight hasn’t really been very helpful in the explorations so far, because the events the Tarens are interested in happened so long ago that the impressions have faded. But Place Sight is a really broad and adaptable Sight, and there was a chance they’d be able to understand the mechanism of the doors.

Ruuel, Halla and Tsur Selkie enhanced. I’m not sure if Tsur Selkie has Place Sight, but Sight Sight is no doubt just as useful here. They told Halla to go first, and remembering what had happened with the platforms the first time someone touched them, I was a bit nervous, but there was no reaction and no Ddura or anything else turning up. Halla closed her eyes, pressing her hand flat against the smooth stone and, I think, holding her breath.

"It only has the appearance of doors," she said, after a long pause. "As the scans suggested, the stone has been fashioned as a solid panel. The aether–" She paused. "It appears to be maintaining the structure. If we damaged it, it is very likely it would reform."

Dropping her hand, she stepped away, being all super-professional. But when Ruuel nodded she relaxed a little, relieved and pleased. It’s so interesting how the squads react to their captains. These are people that they’ve grown up with, known almost all their lives, and probably competed with for the captaincy. But Fourth Squad, even Glade, who really doesn’t seem the type, act like Ruuel’s approval is tremendously important to them. Third Squad’s the same with Taarel. It’s a combination of respect and trust, I guess. I found out today that Fourth also treat Ruuel much as First Squad does Maze.

Once Halla had stepped back, Ruuel moved forward, making his gloves go away. It made me think of what he looked like this morning – such a long time ago now – and I had to work to not be too distracted by the memory of bare shoulders and neck. I really don’t ever see most of the Setari in anything but all-covering uniforms, so it seems like a lot more than I guess it really was: nothing compared to Lohn walking in on me. Like Halla, Ruuel closed his eyes, then carefully touched the tips of his fingers to the stone and I was looking at the length of his lashes and wondering if he plucked his eyebrows when I realised that he was slowly going white.

I looked from his face to his squad’s, and found them all with variations of the same worried expression. Tsur Selkie was more evaluating, but he was also watching Ruuel’s face with a hint of tension, as if he was ready to step forward and catch someone about to faint. Which Ruuel didn’t do, just opening his eyes again. But there were beads of sweat on his forehead, and he looked like he’d taken a fist to the stomach and refused to admit it.

"They were trying to escape," he said, voice steady in a way which took effort. "It sealed, and they could not open it."

He stepped away, recovering enough to shut down into a professional mask, and Tsur Selkie moved forward without comment, doing little more than to confirm Halla’s evaluation of the door with an addendum that he suspected the seal extended at least to the corridor beyond and possibly through the entire complex.

First Squad is quietly protective of Maze. And Fourth Squad’s the same about Ruuel. They spent the rest of the day pretending they weren’t keeping a watchful eye on him. And Ruuel spent the day looking distracted, still caught up in whatever he’d seen or felt about the last moments of the people sealed inside. Not so bad that Selkie took him off duty, but a visible difference to his usual observant and distant air.

The whole thing made me think a lot of Zan, too. Does anyone in her squad respect her? Want to protect her? That prompted me to write a long email to her talking about the things we’d been doing on the mission. The satellite isn’t positioned to directly connect us to Pandora, but she’ll have it already if she’s still there, or will with the next ship if she’s back on Tare. I hope she’s okay.

The rest of the day was filled with even longer doses of dull. The Setari tried to open the seal using Ena manipulation, without any effect, and even had me try. Glade whispered to me afterwards that it was very tactless of me to look so glad I failed. And now they’re bringing some equipment in to try and set up a field to interrupt the flow of aether, or drain it off. They really don’t want to smash their way in, or do anything by force.

Still, the horde of archaeologists are cleaning up the central area very nicely.

Thursday, April 10

Kolarens and crypts

I do wonder where the Tarens get all these tents. Their own planet is totally unsuited to tents as a form of accommodation: too incredibly windy. I suppose they might use tents inside the few caves they haven’t filled with whitestone. Whatever they usually use them for, they certainly have a lot of them. By sunset yesterday, the greensuits had constructed a little canvas city around the outer slope of the northern mountain. Currently the mountains are being referred to (in Taren) as North, South and East, even though I think they’ve been given more official names. North is the mountain on the Nurioth side, and East is the one furthest from the lake. The south mountain has the equipment and finds tents at its base, though the main finds so far have been the fragmentary remains of two skeletons which turned up under the tumble of whitestone in the centre of the circular paths.

Because of the wait for the Litara to return with the equipment to try on the seals, the central circle’s been getting a lot of attention and is looking increasingly bare – great patches of raw earth and freshly cleaned pathway. It’s not a bulls-eye pattern, but a more complex set of part-circles and radial lines, and I think it would make a nice garden. The greysuits are talking about trying to reconstruct the central structure.

I spent the morning doing school work, since Fourth Squad had left right after breakfast to map out all the nearby gates. They found some buildings, too, off under the trees a ways down south, which the greysuits are hoping are related to this site. Ninth Squad is stuck with the more boring guard duty, broken into pairs assigned to different shifts, since the Ddura seems to have taken care of any active threats in the area. With so many people here, I decided to stay out of the way and found myself a natural seat on a big stony shelf overlooking the mess tent. It was an unusually warm day compared to recent temperatures, nice and sunny.

Having grown a little more used to how long it takes the greysuits to do anything, my only reaction to the Litara arriving with the new equipment was to access the latest news feeds: little parcels of the latest public infocasts collected each time one of the ships returns to Tare. There’s a ton in them about Muina, of course, but very little of depth, and I was more interested in whether the Ionoth incursions back on Tare had gone back to normal levels. The Setari have re-established most of their rotations, and the only story I could find was about long-term upward trends.

When I was first given access, I used to close my eyes when using the interface. Now I’m more able to watch and see the world around me at the same time, but I by no means pay attention to my surroundings. And thus I was very confused by sudden movement right next to me and the soft sound of an impact. Suspending the news feed, I saw a couple of people standing over me, wearing a dark green and black uniform. My brain sluggishly caught up to what my eyes had recorded, and I realised one of them had tried to kick me and another had stepped in the way, catching her foot.

"Don’t start this, Katzyen," said the catcher, a guy who sounded more resigned than annoyed. "It’s not what we’re here for." I found it very hard to understand what he was saying, but didn’t immediately realise they were talking in a different dialect.

"If they’d had their way we wouldn’t be here at all." The second speaker was a small woman with sparking-hot green eyes, whose temper seemed set to nuclear smoulder. "Wouldn’t you say it’s only in the spirit of our alliance to test their level of combat training?" She shot a disparaging glance at me. "If you’re an example of the standard we’re constantly tested against, there’s nothing to Taren Setari except their reputation. Can you prove yourself the better?"

That was my introduction to Kolar’s Setari. Kolarens started out with the same language as Tarens, but it’s become quite a distinct dialect. They pronounced the words oddly enough that my translation suggestions weren’t being very helpful. Anyway, my response was to stare at her blankly, finally figure out that she wanted me to spar with her, and say: "Would be short fight."

This made her look even more annoyed, and some other Kolarens who’d been approaching stopped where they were. I guess they thought I was saying I could take Katzyen with one hand tied behind my back.

Before I’d done more than realise I was about to get a fist in the face, rescue showed up in the form of Tsur Selkie, who did one of those suddenly-just-there-in-the-way appearances that people with Speed talent are so good at. One of Ninth Squad – a guy called Thomasal – zipped up a moment later. It’s not as if my seat wasn’t in the full sight of half the camp, after all, and Thomasal was camp guard of the moment. I’d been expecting him to show up, but not Selkie.

The Kolarens had the same reaction to Selkie as the Taren Setari. They went all upright and parade-ground. He didn’t act like he’d interrupted a scene, just glanced over them, then said: "This is Caszandra Devlin. Your briefing material will include the requirements regarding interaction with her. Remember two points. First: Devlin’s system cannot handle contact with multiple talent users. The seizures such contact causes would be fatal without medical intervention. Second: as part of this detachment your priority, above all else, is to keep her alive." He looked at me, adding: "You have a security alert for a reason," then signalled for Thomasal to follow him and left.

The Kolarens had gone interesting colours. They’re a great deal more tanned than Tarens, and tend more to brown and blonde hair than black, though they still appear to have a combination of Asian and Caucasian ancestry. They all looked to be around twenty. The guy who’d stopped Katzyen from hitting me reminded me immensely of the movie version of Lawrence of Arabia, except younger and without the flowing robes and headgear. I turned on my interface name display to see that he was called Arad Nalaz.

"I couldn’t fight my way out of wet paper bag," I told Katzyen, feeling sorry for her now she’d stopped being aggressive and had gone dull red. "Would be very short fight because I lose straight away. Maybe we start this conversation over again?"

One of the Kolarens, golden-brown and medium-tall, began to laugh. "We’ve certainly managed a strong first impression." He came closer, and did a quick hand to chest bow. "I’m Raiten Shaf and I think it’s very unfortunate of you to be dressed as a Taren Setari if you’re not."

"Assigned to Setari," I explained. "Sometimes go into Ena with them so need uniform’s protection." The Kolaren Setari weren’t wearing nanosuits, though, and have to carry actual weapons for close combat instead of growing them.

"You’re the, ah, displaced person from the world called Earth?" asked a very burnished woman named Laram Diav.

"Yes. Is Kolaren Setari here to baby-sit archaeologist horde too?"

"That’s – well, probably not an inaccurate description." Shaf grinned. "So you have seizures if people touch you? That’s quite an allergy."

"Only if too many people touch me at once," I said, then my face went hot. "Pretend that didn’t sound strange. You think Taren Setari not want you here?"

Shaf gave Katzyen an exasperated glance. "No. But we have spent what felt a short eternity being told that technical details of our contribution needed to be finalised."

"Excuse after excuse, delaying any of us from coming to Muina," Katzyen said. "We wouldn’t even know that a settlement had been established, if they’d had their way."

"No-one on Tare would either, probably. But Setari don’t make that decision." I shrugged. "Give you unofficial welcome, anyway. Is beautiful place."

That produced the classic exiled-Muinan expression, and the Kolaren Setari ended up spending the rest of the morning up on my rock shelf having a discussion about Earth and Muina and how I’d ended up at Pandora and then Tare. They seemed like nice people. Less formal than Taren Setari; or more like the older squads. It was impossible to miss the deep resentment they hold toward Tarens. Tare basically showed up fifty years ago and started messing with their world. Kolar was in something like the Gaslight era while Tarens had had the interface for decades, and advanced nanotech for something like seventy years. Other than the Kolaren Setari program and the whitestone building material, Tare hasn’t yet allowed Kolar anything like the full extent of their technology – only their Setari program had been allowed use of the interface. It sounds like their approach has been a little on the paternalist side, with a strong eye to profit. Almost guaranteed to cause offence.

I’d love to know what Tsur Selkie’s reasons were for leaving me to be the Kolaren Setari’s introduction to this site. It didn’t last too long: the arrival of the Litara had been Fourth Squad’s signal to head back and Ruuel sent me one of his characteristically word-stingy messages: "Testing before lunch." He must have sent one to Shaf as well (he’s the Kolaren squad’s captain) since he reacted at the same time. Hopefully he got a little more explanation, but he did look kind of quizzical when he said: "Time to move, it seems."

We went down to meet Fourth Squad, who were waiting near the finds tent, watching the construction of some really complicated machine around the door of South Mountain. As usual, Ruuel brought everyone into mission channel as soon as we were in sight of each other, and began briefing and leading us all further south, to an area which was mainly low bushes.

"Contact with Devlin enhances and sometimes warps talents. This session is to verify the effect of Devlin on your available talent sets, then to practice movement and multiple squad enhancement rotations in combat simulation. We don’t have adequate test shielding here, so push elementals to far range. Sonn."

"Unenhanced," Sonn said, and shot a lightning bolt outward and upwards. She touched the tips of her fingers to my arm. "Enhanced."

I guess no-one had mentioned the enhancement effects to the Kolarens. A few of them looked briefly incredulous as the ball of lightning arced and spat in the air, drifting slowly away.

"The distortion has been consistent, and observed effects on each talent are listed in the briefing material." Ruuel gave Shaf one of his captain-nods and Fourth Squad stepped back, obviously handing over to him.

Fourth Squad was an interesting choice to end up first to work with a bunch of Kolarens with chips on their shoulders. There’s plenty of squads which might have soothed some of that resentment; certainly First Squad could put anyone at their ease. And some who wouldn’t want to: it was a damn good thing that it wasn’t Fifth Squad, who would have guaranteed that interplanetary relations developed an Ice Age. But Ruuel – Ruuel is always so focused on getting the job done, as quickly and painlessly as possible, and obviously doesn’t see any point measuring himself or his squad against other people, or trying to prove anything at all. He behaved exactly as if the Kolarens were any squad who hadn’t worked with me before, with every expectation that they would just get on with it.

Shaf’s obviously good at adapting to the unexpected, and had Nalaz start out with Wind, buying himself some time to review the briefing material they won’t let me see. They tested without anything odd happening, and then there was a precise, exacting session of enhancement, whizzing about with Telekinesis, and fake combat, and I was very amused to see Katzyen trying not to look pleased because she’d earned one of Ruuel’s brief, approving nods. He has that effect on people.

He was back to being his usual focused self today, but there were dark shadows under his eyes. I don’t think he slept much last night. He’s asleep two pods away from me right now, and I hope he has a better night.

The training session was winding down when I started hearing the Ddura. It says something for my chances of hiding my feelings for Ruuel that he always seems to know when I’m debating telling him something. He said, "Hold," to the squads, then looked at me. "The Ddura?"

I nodded. "Sounds anxious."

"Hunting?"

"No. The confused noise." I transmitted what I was hearing into the squad channel, and watched his eyes narrow.

He added Tsur Selkie to the channel, then said: "Either a reaction to the machine itself, or to a threat to the site’s integrity."

"Continue the relay, Devlin," was all Selkie said to us, but he obviously said a whole lot on other channels since there was a sudden exodus of people out of the central circle toward the edge of the lake.

The tone of the Ddura’s call changed almost immediately. "Now partly question noise, but mainly unhappy noise," I said helpfully over the interface, then asked Shaf aloud: "Kolar has dogs, right?"

He wasn’t surprised by my hearing the Ddura, so I guessed he’d gotten through my briefing material, and just nodded in answer to my question.

"Ddura acts like very big dog." I looked back at Ruuel. "This sounds like one not know Muinans back. Ddura at Pandora stopped making this cry."

"Security identification has been reapplied," Tsur Selkie said. "Stand by."

The Ddura paused mid-moan, making the confused sound again, then the question noise. But then it switched back to being mournful.

"Security identification had been placed on the power unit," Selkie said, sounding satisfied. "Evidently that isn’t sufficient to cover a machine using that power unit. The device looks as if it will be successful, however."

He left the channel, and Ruuel said: "Keep lunch brief. If the site is opened, both squads will go in as point team."

I’m guessing he had a private channel open to Shaf, since they walked off together. I dropped out of mission channel as well, and glanced at two squads of Setari who were going to go on being super-correct at each other, but at least didn’t seem to be openly hostile. I’ve no doubt Fourth Squad knew that Katzyen had started out spoiling for a fight, but they would follow Ruuel’s lead. Ruuel’s lead wasn’t exactly chatty, though, and everyone was silent as we started walking back to the mess tent.

"Are Kolaren squads numbered as well?" I asked Taranza, who looked to be around my age rather than the couple of years older the other Kolarens seemed to be. She had short, streaky blonde hair and less of a tan than the others, and a way of looking around with wide-eyed appreciation which I liked. "Like this is Fourth Squad, and the other squad here is Ninth Squad?"

"We’re First Squad," Taranza said, with a faintly apologetic glance at the Taren Setari. "That is going to cause some confusion."

Both squads ended up talking that over during lunch, even Sonn making one or two suggestions. The Ninth Squad captain, whose watch was about to start and who was eating breakfast when we reached the mess tent, ended up deciding that we could use a variation which was the equivalent of Squad One and it would still mean the same thing and the Kolarens seemed okay with that, though I expect they’ll keeping calling themselves First Squad in their own dialect.

Islen Tezart explained that the machine his team had been building created a counter field of aether to hold the site’s own aether field back from the doorway around South Mountain. Then they used the same sort of nanotech which they create their buildings with to eat the seal – and only the seal – away. The counter field machine formed an ugly frame about the opening, but it was done.

Going in as point team was delayed by what was on the far side of the seal. Ruuel’s initial reaction had prepared me a little and I’d expected there would be the skeletons of the people who’d been trapped inside, but no-one had guessed at the sheer number. Dozens, maybe hundreds, packed into a short entry corridor and hexagonal room beyond. How many were crushed by the panicked press trying to escape? The seal had preserved them well, too: leathery skin stretched over grey bone, cloth still whole, although so fragile a touch would probably destroy it. They were almost all lying facing outward, withered hands stretched forward or covering their heads. I guess it was the Ddura which they were running from. Something which caught and killed them all together.

Imaging from scans had already shown us the general outline of the underground rooms: five ring-like levels, each smaller than the previous one until finally there was what seemed to be a single room, sitting at the centre point between the three mountains. Once I’d seen how huge the place was I wasn’t surprised the Tarens had thrown a big portion of their resources at this place. The site commander wanted the Setari to sweep the rooms of this part of this level for anything which sparked their Combat Sight – monsters, traps, invisible lurking death – and if possible locate the communication platform and maybe whatever was generating the aether field. Islen Duffen wasn’t very pleased with the Setari going in first, even though they were under orders to levitate as much as possible to avoid disturbing anything. But since the massive battle she seems more inclined to listen to what the Setari have to say, at least where safety is concerned. She wants me to tell her more about Earth history when she has time, but since we found this site she’s worked non-stop and looks ready to drop, so I don’t know when that will happen.

The walls inside the site glowed: the same sort of glow made in Pandora during moonfall, but with no free-flowing aether. It meant we didn’t have to worry about lights, at least. Fourth and Squad One split into their respective teams, and worked their way along a main central passage, moving apart to follow side-corridors and enter rooms, and then joining up again. One thing they found out almost immediately was that the ramps down were sealed like the entrances, and when we met a longer connecting passageway on this level, it was also sealed. So we’ve only gained access to one third of the top level.

It was a town, not a tomb. I’ve no idea why any of the old Muinans would want to live underground – the issue of ventilation alone would be enough to make it less than ideal – but every room we looked in seemed to be living quarters, except for occasional ones which were water sources or gathering areas. Nothing leapt out at us and there were no traps. The communication platform was in the room at the end of the long spoke passage and after a tedious amount of back and forth discussion they had Sonn try to use the platform to deactivate the seals. Didn’t work, did produce an ecstatic Ddura, but fortunately going back outside was next on our schedule.

The technology group spent the afternoon constructing another machine around the entrance to North Mountain, while the archaeologists broke into two teams: one painstakingly untangling the human wreckage just within the entrance, and the other working on the nearest of the rooms. The archaeologists are so tremendously excited. It’s not that everything was perfectly preserved or anything, but there had been very few places at Pandora and Nurioth which hadn’t been exposed to wind and rain and been pulled about by animals. And, of course, it’s working old Lantaren technology. I don’t know if this is the big break we need to fix the spaces, but it’s the first major find since Tare gained security clearance.

My Ddura-headache wasn’t too bad, but I was feeling tired as well, so I was glad when Ruuel sent us back to the Diodel. Squad One is sleeping on the Litara, which is staying for the night. Most of the expedition is sleeping in the tent city, but while the Taren Setari are more accustomed to being outside because they’re trained to go into the spaces, the Sight talents especially find it difficult to sleep without the shielding on our pods or their rooms back on Tare. Combat Sight reacts to people coming near them, for a start.

Ruuel was absent, as he often is during meals, and I had a feeling Fourth Squad would probably talk about Squad One if I wasn’t there, so I headed for a shower and bed straight after dinner.

I was sitting sideways on my pod seat braiding my hair when Ruuel showed up from wherever he’d been. "Devlin. Have you seen the cat Ionoth since the infirmary?"

This wasn’t a question I wanted to answer. But it also seemed weird for him to suddenly bring it up. I blinked, then guessed why he was asking. "You’ve been warning Kolaren captain about silly things I might do that he has to watch out for?"

"Yes." Very straightforward, very typical. "You’ve sighted it, I take it? Report it next time."

If there’s ever a time I really do need to lie to Ruuel, I’m going to have no chance at all. And I didn’t think I could just pretend I was going to do what he said, either. "I do most things told to because either make sense to me, or don’t see any choice. Ghost I handed over once, so tests could be run, but not going to do again."

Other than a couple of fits of temper I’ve had with the medics, I think that was the first time I’ve refused to do what I was told since I was rescued – and Ruuel is really the last person I want to say no to. I felt pretty nervous about his reaction, but he just looked steadily at me a moment, then said: "And if it proves less innocuous than you believe? You will not be able to undo any damage it causes."

"Just because she not turn into evil, people-eating kitten in the past not mean she won’t one day? May as well lock me back up in case I decide run around stab people."

"The cat has a better chance of landing a blow," he said, totally straight-faced, and shook his head, apparently deciding it wasn’t worth pressing the point. "Get some rest."

I felt like telling him to practice what he preached, since the shadows under his eyes were worse than ever, but I was too disconcerted by more evidence of a sense of humour (or, just possibly, proof that he is totally bereft of one and is saying these things without a shred of irony). Besides, he was already walking away.

I’m finding I like waking up a lot earlier than everyone else, not least because it gives me a chance to write up the day in this diary without anyone looking at me curiously, but today I wish I’d stayed in the dream I was having. I was lying curled up with Ruuel, not talking or doing anything, just curled up in a dark, quiet place listening to him breathe, to his heart beating. It was an uneventful but intense dream, and incredibly real. When I woke up I felt so content, so happy, I wanted to go straight back to sleep.

Must find cure for besotted goopiness.

Sweat

Each of the main entrances are open now, and each third was very much the same inside. Corpses just inside the seal, and then living quarters beyond. We haven’t found anything which was obviously controlling the seal, and won’t be opening any more levels until more machine parts arrive. The technicians weren’t expecting to have to build dozens of the things. The Litara's gone off to fetch that and other construction-related items, as they’ve begun the first stages of building the settlement, which is going to be called Arenrhon after some Taren historical figure.

Ruuel decided his squad was getting out of shape and started them on an evil training regimen. Being in good physical condition lessens the strain of using their talents, and these constantly on-mission days without their usual training facilities means Fourth haven’t had much opportunity for strength training. So they did lots of jogging and chin lifts and things like that. And since I’m assigned to Fourth, I got to do it as well, except – thankfully – only about a quarter of what Ruuel put everyone else through. That still nearly killed me.

It was bearable, though. Things I could obviously not do – like chin lifts – he didn’t make me stick at, and had me do milder versions instead. I didn’t enjoy the day, but I got through it, and Fourth Squad were good at not making me feel embarrassed about being comparatively pathetic.

Friday, April 11

It’s all a question of angles

Today I taught a handful of greensuits and greysuits and three Setari squads how to skip stones. I was waiting around for Fourth to come back from their longer-than-mine training run, and since it was a very still day and this lakeshore is even pebblier than Pandora’s, I entertained myself by collecting a bunch of stones and seeing if I could best my record (seven skips).

My arms were tired from push-ups, though, and the best I could manage was four skips, and was looking around for more stones when I realised I had a small audience: two greensuits and a greysuit looking immensely puzzled. Their question – "But, how?" – says something about how different their planets are from Earth. Kolar isn’t entirely desert, but it’s a dry world and most of its water is in underground Springs, while Tare is all massively violent oceans. By the time Fourth got back I had most of Squad One and two from Ninth lined up in a row.

Ruuel let Fourth have a break to play around, but didn’t try himself, going off to be captainly. Glade easily beat my own record, and asked what the maximum was people could do on Earth, but I didn’t know. I think when he taught me Dad said something about people doing over thirty skips, but that always seemed a bit much to be right. Par Auron took the record today – eight skips. At least half the Setari could skip better than me on their second or third try. They’re just good at physical tasks, not to mention strong.

Then it was more exercise: stretches and lifting big water containers Ruuel had borrowed from the greensuits. Fortunately we’re doing all this training in a clearing a little north of the tents, so I didn’t have to deal with an audience. I think every muscle I have is sore.

Saturday, April 12

Museum exhibit

Uneventful day. You’d think exploring lost alien underground cities would be more dramatic, but going through the second level of the installation, which required another three machines to hold open the entrances, was very much a repetition of the first level. More living quarters, larger ones. Fewer bodies. Wood well-preserved, metal tarnished, cloth fragile. Not much writing. The Lantaren caste of the Muinans did use a written language, but non-Lantarens apparently weren’t literate. Other than a couple of inscriptions on pots and statues (possibly the names of people – the alphabet has mutated a fair deal and I can only half read it), I didn’t spot anything written down. Definitely no library, or manual of instructions, or super-secret plans. No field projector we could turn off, either.

One thing all this has made clear to me is I would not have made a good archaeologist. I don’t have nearly the patience for it. I concentrated on my school work during the waiting about, and watched a handful of greensuits who seem to have fallen in love with stone skipping. And tried not to look at the smooth white scar of the new settlement. I don’t like to think too much about the impact I’ve had on this world.

Sunday, April 13

Large and loud

This morning Fourth Squad and I went into near-space, trying to work our way down to the lowest levels of the installation through the gaps in the walls that only exist in near-space. But the aether shield exists there as well, and though we did go down to the second level through the holes the machines were maintaining, we couldn’t find any way through to the lower levels.

And the Ddura came and looked at us while we were there, which was really disconcerting. It’s just like a humungous cloud of coloured light, and felt like tingly ice crystals on my face. And was tremendously happy about the Setari, who all could hear it in near-space. It Hhhaaaa’d enough that even Ruuel couldn’t hide how much he wished it would shut up. The greysuits were tremendously interested in the data we brought back about the Ddura, and Fourth Squad all went and lay down for a while. The technology group is growing concerned about having so many of the field-disrupting machines operating together and is going to undo a few of them and open a single path downward in only the first of the thirds. Lots of standing about guarding them while they do that for the Setari.

I stuck with the lying down.

Monday, April 14

Worship

The third level of the installation seems to be some kind of church. Maybe. It was empty of anything resembling furniture, just had carved images of the same woman all over the walls, and mosaics all over the floors. Everywhere the same beautiful, idealised woman, with rivers flowing from her tears, and animals (pippins!) hiding in the folds of her skirts, and forests unwinding from her long flowing hair.

Fourth Squad went very expressionless when looking through this area, and no-one is entirely certain if this is meant to represent their world mother-goddess. There are three entrances to the facility, and the faces above each entrance look different. This woman matches the face above the door for this third, so everyone is wondering, if this is Muina, who are the other two faces meant to be?

Since the levels have been decreasing in size, they’d been expecting to clear down to the lowest level today, but they don’t seem to be able to get their machine to work on the next shield. After spending the entire afternoon standing around watching them not be able to figure out how to get through, Ruuel decided his squad could do with some close-combat training to get the kinks out. This unfortunately included me, with Sonn as my partner. But though she gave me a heck of a bruise on my leg because she expected me to have some faint ability to dodge, Sonn was otherwise a methodical and practical teacher.

Squad One joined in after a while. They haven’t all magically stopped resenting Tarens, but they’ve decided Fourth Squad are decent enough at their jobs and not to blame for a few decades of interplanetary politics. Or, more importantly, Fourth Squad don’t act like they think Kolaren Setari aren’t as good as Taren Setari, and so Squad One don’t constantly have their hackles up.

That didn’t mean both squads weren’t interested in how they measured up to each other at close combat. Particularly Katzyen (her first name is Meral). And Fourth Squad is after all still human and took the matches seriously. Neither squad seemed definitively better. As he usually does, Ruuel was instructing rather than participating – I think he avoids competitive situations – but I wasn’t at all surprised when Katzyen asked him to spar with her.

He agreed matter-of-factly, since it was one thing to avoid competition and another to put her back up by treating her as no competition at all. I doubt he wants too many Kajals obsessing over him. In a way he got that anyway, though not in a hostile way. After countering and avoiding Katzyen’s attacks for a while, as she pushed to even come near him, he ended the fight with what looked like tidy and untroubled efficiency. And told her to work on attacks from the left, since she was weaker with those.

She’s barely taken her eyes off him since. Being comprehensively bettered at hand-to-hand combat isn’t my idea of a turn-on, but it obviously worked for Katzyen. I think it might have worked for Diav as well, and a couple of the greensuits who’d been watching from a distance. Unsurprisingly, Ruuel failed to show any awareness of newly-earned admiration. His squad all noticed: Glade highly amused, Mori tolerant, Sonn dismissive, Halla distant, and Par just a little pink.

I’m getting to know them, settling into a new my squad. Four months since I was rescued. Five months since I was walking home from my last exam and took a wrong turning. I’d be well into my first year of university by now – presuming I did well enough to get in. Jules' birthday soon, and then Mother’s Day. The days add up.

Tuesday, April 15

Uncomfortable belief

Lately I’ve been dreaming consistently of Ruuel: vaguer versions of the dream I had of being curled up with him asleep, which has made me look forward to heading off to bed. Last night, though, I dreamed that Fourth Squad had been transferred out overnight, and I was now assigned to Seventh Squad. No-one even told me they were gone: I just found Forel and her cronies having breakfast. And then…it was all a confused jumble, but involved more of the training I’ve been doing the last couple of days, except with Seventh Squad making smart-ass comments at my expense. And I was all crushed and humiliated and hurt because Fourth had gone without saying goodbye. Not Ruuel so much, since he’s always so captain with me, but Mori and Glade and Par – even Halla’s chatting with me a little now, and Sonn doesn’t disapprove of me quite so much. And they were just gone without a word, on to their next assignment.

I guess the dream is a reaction to working so much with Fourth these last weeks, to starting to feel like I belong with them. My subconscious was reminding me I’m not part of any squad, that I will always be a temporary assignment. That Mori and Glade probably chat to me because Ruuel told them to.

Fortunately I’m still waking up long before most everyone else. After a shower and a morning spent writing email to Zee and Mara and Zan, I’d gained enough perspective to not look obviously depressed. And it’s not as if I think they’re planning to change my assignment in the near future, since Fourth is the only squad with a Sight Sight talent. It’s funny how the Nuran’s attempt to warn me off prompted the Tarens to drag me around Muina’s ruins on the off-chance that they can figure out what he meant.

No progress on breaking through to the next level today, so they opened up the other parts of the third level instead. It was all more murals and carvings and mosaics, but with two different people playing the role of god-like being: a man and a different woman. All a little confronting for ex-Muinans. So far as they know, the Lantarens enjoyed an unquestioned right to rule, but were not considered gods, and the Tarens are very uncomfortable with imagery which so obviously treats them as gods. Well, presuming these were meant to be Lantarens and not some gods that the Tarens don’t remember anyone believing in. Maybe this is the not-very-secret base of a cult or something.

Muinan culture must have been very unified before they had to leave. Given the similarity of Kolar, Nuri and Tare’s languages, they must have all started out speaking the same way. But I guess the similarity was partly a result of having a single ruling class which could teleport and travel through wormholes and, according to Katha, were all raised and taught to control their powers at some kind of central imperial training city. Not Nurioth – a place called Kalasa, though the Tarens don’t know much more than the name. Figuring out which of the ruined cities is Kalasa is another expedition priority.

The greysuits had some heartfelt discussions about the murals. Dase and Katha, who I only occasionally get a chance to talk to now that they’ve been moved out of the Diodel to the tent city, were divided on the question. Dase thinks the murals must be representations of Muina and two unknown gods, or possibly even aspects of Muina. Katha thinks it’s three Lantarens. Since the Lantarens aren’t held in great esteem on Tare, I’m not precisely sure why it’s so upsetting for her to see images showing they were incredibly narcissistic. But then, Tare and Kolar both have a fairly unified view of what a god is (or rather they don’t believe in gods, they believe planets have spirits).

Anya from Ninth, who has been stuck on night watch since Ninth Squad was rotated here, unfortunately has been moved to day watch. Urg. She and Katzyen really aren’t benefiting by being on the same schedule, and though they’re not openly glaring at each other, there’s a distinct frost which seems to be extending to all the Taren Setari.

Which is the main reason I was eating dinner with Dase and Katha.

Wednesday, April 16

Killing time

Fourth Squad’s gone off gate-mapping again today, since there’s been no progress in getting to the next level of Creepy Undercity. I had one of my regularly scheduled medical exams in the morning, during which the medic noted I had a big bruise on my leg from training and a few random minor bruises and sore bits, but otherwise was the healthiest I’d been since the last time I nearly died. The amount of sitting-about I get through continues to benefit my school work, and I’ve moved on to marginally more interesting classes. Even though my spelling is pathetic, my comprehension has increased enough that I can push through most lessons super-quick. But it’s still frustrating, rather like this site, which everyone thought was such a big discovery, but which hasn’t given us any explanations at all.

The day’s growing cloudy and win–

–

Okay, pissed off now. I was sitting at the outside tables in the mess area writing when I heard someone gasp and stumble next to me, nearly dropping the drinks they were carrying. I didn’t hear the crunch, but I glanced up to see a couple of greysuits looking guiltily at the ground at my thoroughly trodden-on watch.

My face must have shown exactly what I felt – kicked in the guts – because they went from sorry to stricken, the one not holding the drinks rushing to pick up my watch and turn it over hopefully, only to have the back fall off. It was just an el cheapo digital, $20. The face was cracked and dead and I totally felt like crying.

But I didn’t. I’m proud of that in retrospect, of holding it together enough to look around me, just a log-capture in every direction. I told the greysuits that it was okay – not that they believed me for a second – and took the bits of my watch and went back to the Diodel. I had my schoolbag with me, tucked into the end of my pod, and grabbed out my long-neglected mobile. The battery had run down ages ago, and I hadn’t chased up finding out how it had been charged since I’d copied the music into my interface already. Then I found one of the science greysuits and asked if she had any idea how it had been recharged.

Her name was Elless Royara and she took my phone like it was a brand new toy, but all she had to do was look up the records of whatever they’d done before, then put it in a thing which looked like a microwave, but recharged instead of frying my mobile. It seems it wasn’t really a difficult thing to do: the Tarens have gone through a few centuries of equipment becoming obsolete, and have plenty of practice working out ways to recharge older, museum pieces.

After thanking Elless I went back to the Diodel and turned on my phone. It had been so long the date and time needed to be reset, but I could at least make a rough guesstimate of what proper Sydney time would be, and of course the date hadn’t changed from when I’d started writing in my diary.

Only then did I let myself relax, and review my log.

I almost always wear my watch underneath my uniform, unless it’s a mission or some other situation where I think I might get soaked. But I often take it off when I’m writing, because the buckle presses into my wrist. I’d set it on the corner of the table, near my elbow. It wasn’t in my peripheral vision, and I suppose it’s within the bounds of possibility that I’d knocked it off and it had bounced onto the rocky ground next to me and got itself crushed.

But I didn’t really believe that, and a careful review of my log showed me Terel Revv from Ninth watching. Revv’s one of Anya’s cronies, and a telekinetic. Not proof, of course, and he was actually looking pretty unhappy.

They probably didn’t realise how important it is to me, to know what date it is on Earth. To know when I should be wishing my family happy birthday, to mark the dates of the year back home. To be able to keep track of my own age.

I don’t see that there’s anything to gain from making a fuss. I’ll be more careful not to give people opportunities, and certainly won’t sit out in public writing my diary again, or leave my mobile exposed. I need to remember that I’m someone who total strangers will feel strongly about: whether to be grateful I unlocked their world, or to hate me for threatening their ideas of Muina’s past, or whatever Anya has against me.

The Setari needs fewer assholes.

Pass/Fail

Fuss happens, whether I want it to or not.

After venting in my diary, I hung about the deserted passenger lounge of the Diodel fooling with my newly revived mobile, listening to proper played-out-loud songs while it grew darker and windier outside. Then Tsur Selkie showed up with Ruuel in tow. Time for a pause in the music.

"Do you have your damaged wrist-piece with you?" Tsur Selkie asked, without preliminaries. He and Ruuel are alike in more than looks; since he considered it obvious why he was there, he didn’t think it necessary to explain.

I was momentarily tempted to pretend I’d thrown it away, but even in the unlikely event they believed me, they could have just used Path Sight. I expect I didn’t look very keen as I pulled it out of the little pocket I’d made for it, though.

"How did you know?" I asked, dropping it into his outstretched hand.

"The technician who crushed it was concerned about the strength of your reaction, and reported to his senior. One of the site guards on duty had you on log, including your survey of the area." Selkie wore gloves on both hands, one of them fingerless, and looked down as he touched a bare fingertip to the cracked face of my watch. He didn’t take more than a moment or two, and his face didn’t give anything away as he handed the watch to Ruuel, but I knew he must have seen something to confirm my suspicions because he went on to ask: "Have there been other incidents?"

I shook my head. "It was just I didn’t think I knocked it on ground." Then, because neither of them looked like he believed me, I shrugged and added: "There’s squads I rather not be assigned to, but no-one tried to break my things or hurt me or anything before."

"Which squads?" Selkie asked immediately.

"Expect you have good idea," I said, annoyed.

"Indulge me."

I thought about it, then decided it was nothing I wasn’t prepared to say if I were assigned to them. "Fifth and Seventh so far. Wouldn’t feel safe going into Ena with either captain, so would rather not. Ninth, I didn’t feel that way about." Ruuel handed back my watch and I looked down at it, remembering the sick stabbing feeling in my stomach. "They probably not realise what it mean to me."

"Not the object but the function, yes?" Selkie said, reaching to pick up my mobile. "This device can replace it?"

"Both have the date on Earth. That needs recharging every five or six days."

Selkie gave it back to me, added a little nod and left.

"What will happen now?" I asked, since Ruuel hadn’t gone immediately after him.

"Reprimand for any involved. The squad will return to Tare for review, then likely be stood down and reformed with personnel changes."

All for knocking my watch onto the ground. I felt ill.

Ruuel gave me an impatient look. "Don’t overreact. Ninth has needed to be rebalanced since it was formed. Failing this assignment is only the trigger."

I was confused what assignment he was talking about, until I realised he meant me. Protecting me is the Setari’s primary assignment here. I expect that emotionally screwing over someone you’re supposed to be looking after would count as failing.

"They forgot the psychological aspects," I said, letting myself find it funny.

I’ve no doubt Ruuel knew I was quoting him, but he didn’t break out of serious captain mode. "Concentrating on a practical solution was a good response," he said. "But you continue to hesitate to communicate when you most need to. It’s not only your own welfare you put at risk."

"Today more choosing not to speak," I pointed out. "But generally don’t see how to decide what’s important."

"Don’t try. If anything prompts you to wonder if you should inform us, or ask for help, then always assume the answer is yes. The same rule should serve for speculation about these sites. Parallels with Earth’s cultures could be misleading, but we cannot judge their worth if we do not hear them."

I looked out the long view port, to the triangle of mountain and camp which I could see from that part of the ship. It wasn’t raining yet, but people were getting under cover, the greensuits making sure all the tents were secure. It was true I’d been stopping myself from sharing any more guesses about the installation, not wanting to waste the historians' time.

"What did you feel when you touched that door?" I asked. Ruuel didn’t answer, and I turned back to find him even more than usually shuttered. Rather than make a point about people communicating, I continued: "Could you tell if it was Ddura which kill them?"

"No." He paused. "Fear, panic, anger, overwhelming betrayal. A sense of something approaching, but no tangible impression of its form."

"Was talking to Dase and Katha yesterday about how whole thing doesn’t make sense to the historians," I said. "Accepted Taren history says Lantarens decided to make space travel easier, built Pillars. Pillars tore gates everywhere including between real-space and near-space, and Ionoth started killing people on Muina. Lantarens built Ddura to kill Ionoth and to try and make it easier to get to the Pillars. Something happened that made them lose control of the Ddura, and lots people start dropping dead. Before finding Arenrhon installation, technicians had decided that it was combination of aether and Ddura killing people because their security clearance revoked. All historians here having big argument about how long did that all take? They all thought it was quick – was maybe around a Taren year from turning on Pillars to running away from Muina. This place fits that timeline wrong.

"When saw there was a town inside, historians thought maybe must be intended to be a kind of bunker, a place intended to keep the Ionoth out, but that didn’t work on Ddura and Ddura killed them. But whole place built in less than one Taren year, everyone moved in? Could Lantarens do that as quickly as Tarens can? If emergency shelter built quick, why spend time covering walls with pictures? And Ddura – whenever we touch the platforms, the Ddura have responded so quick. Don’t get impression it takes them long to kill things. Whole town would have died in moments if it was Ddura. And only me can hear anyway. Would not have had time to try and run away and get packed into exits and crushed. But if it was big wave of aether, then would have just collapsed in piles like Setari did. If was slow drift of aether, wouldn’t they all barricaded themselves in rooms with doors shut? And the air shafts they’ve uncovered are sealed by the aether stone too – so doesn’t seem like people meant to survive in this place once aether shield up."

I don’t usually try speaking Taren in such big blocks, and was a little tangled by this point. I’m pretty sure Ruuel had heard most of those theories already anyway; the Taren historians had been arguing about it for the past few days. He listened without impatience, though, and said: "We can’t overlook the possibility of there being another source of danger here, something the Lantarens could not defend against."

I shook my head. "You said it before. Betrayal. I think maybe the Lantarens killed the people here."

He didn’t give away what he thought of the idea, just said: "Why?"

"Being underground with a seal covering even air vents. And especially all the worshipful imagery. The Egyptians did this with their God-kings: preserved their bodies, built massive monuments to put them in, surrounded them with their treasures, covered the walls with images of the stories of their lives. And provided them with a household to serve them in afterlife."

That made his eyes narrow. "A household?"

"Servants. They would kill them, or just seal in tomb alive." I sighed. "It doesn’t quite fit, because if that was what was happening here, it would be well-known culturally. And not normal to build houses for the servants in the tomb. But if they were told it was a shelter beforehand, and then sealed inside and killed by whatever the Lantarens were doing, it does seem to match more than anything else I can guess."

"We may learn more tomorrow. They’ve been making progress on the fourth level seal." Ruuel had the distracted look of interface-conversation, so I wasn’t surprised when he only added: "Go get some lunch," and left.

I blatantly disobeyed orders. The idea of meeting any of Ninth Squad made me feel too ill to eat. But there’s never any escape, and Kaeline brought Anya and Revv in to apologise to me. Anya did so with a complete lack of grace or sincerity, but I think Revv meant it. I’d been wondering if only Revv would take the blame, but it seems everyone else has as much trouble lying to Tsur Selkie as I do, and it was obvious to anyone who’d seen anything of Ninth Squad that Anya would be behind a game of tease the stray. Kaeline sent them off, then apologised to me on her own behalf.

"Would rather no-one had noticed," I told her. "Caused all these problems for rest of Ninth Squad."

"We brought our problem with us," she said. "I hope to work with you again one day."

She left, and I felt slightly better because I noticed as she went that for once she looked as if she didn’t have a headache. I wasn’t surprised when Mori turned up and made me go have lunch. Ruuel doesn’t forget the psychological aspects.

We spent the afternoon in near-space trying to map a path to Pandora, but though the path Par was following did seem to lead there, one of the gates was a rotational which seemed likely to shift soon, so Ruuel decided we’d look for a better route another day. By the time we returned, Ninth Squad had left with the Litara, and I was no longer feeling too embarrassed to talk even to Fourth Squad.

I’d rather the whole day hadn’t happened, though.

Friday, April 18

Creepy

It took the greysuits well into mid-morning to finally solve what they decided was a deliberate layer of extra security around the lower levels. I went in with only Fourth Squad, since Squad One’s now stuck with covering watches. The good news was that there were no more shield walls, so we were able to travel freely through the three rooms of the fourth level, and down to the fifth level. The bad news was there was still no handy library, or big wall of explanation in stone, or any writing.

Except the names carved on all the sarcophagi.

I might have felt tempted to be smug if the place hadn’t freaked me out so much. I wasn’t too bad on the fourth floor, just felt kind of squashed when we went in, but I thought that was because we were deeper underground and the place was creepy. The fourth level rooms were wedge-shaped, taking up a third of a circle each with the outer wall arranged in a tier. It reminded me of the audience of an auditorium except instead of seats there were all these not-quite-upright sarcophagi. Smaller, and far less stylistically rendered than Egyptian ones, so that it was like there was a room full of tilted, metallic people looking down at us.

When we’ve been doing these initial searches, Sonn’s log has been streamed back to the ever-growing audience of greysuits, but only the people in charge (in this case Tsen Helada, Islen Duffen, Islen Tezart and Tsur Selkie) have been in channel and able to make comments. Islen Duffen, sounding considerably startled, wanted a closer examination of the sarcophagi, and I had my first opportunity to obediently err on the side of interrupting.

"Are they blurry to anyone else?" I asked, sounding fantastically apologetic – I’ve grown far too used to making sure to keep my mouth shut when we’re on-mission to feel at all comfortable piping up whenever the notion strikes me.

"Show us," was all Ruuel said, signalling for Fourth Squad to hold.

I streamed my log to the mission channel. It’s pretty hard to describe the blurriness. It was like each sarcophagus was layered over the top of itself over and over again, except not quite lined up. Not all of them were blurry, and some were far blurrier than others.

"Scan the whole room," Tsur Selkie said, and I looked slowly around, finding a few other blurry things, though nothing nearly so bad as the sarcophagi. There were lots of carvings on the walls, of upright, stiffly posed people gazing up proudly at the three familiar god wanna-be’s, and that bit was particularly blurry. Even Halla went blurry a couple of times.

"Vitals are raised," Ruuel said. "Return?"

"Not yet. Keep that stream open, Devlin, and report any further developments."

We wandered around the fourth level, finding it all much the same: spectacular and spooky and in my case blurry. Since I hadn’t shown any negative reaction other than signs of mild effort, we went down to the final room.

I was by no means surprised to see three final sarcophagi, facing what looked like the top third of a car-sized malachite marble rising out of the floor in the very centre of the room. By see, I mean peer through a blur of white and grey and gold, trying to make out the shapes. I went over the mission log later to see what it looked like to everyone else. Ruuel’s and Halla’s view of it was almost as confusing as they switched through their Sights, but very different to mine, involving dark mists and shadowy human figures. The sarcophagi were very beautiful renditions of the three who were featured so gloriously on the third level, slightly stylised, with lots of gold and silver and black metal.

"Impressions?" Selkie asked.

"The central stone is the power source of the shield," Ruuel said. "Beyond that…there is a great deal beyond that, but I cannot interpret it."

"Danger," Halla added. "Almost – almost, I would call it active menace."

Ruuel turned his head to me to remind me to speak and also, I think, to check how I was holding up. The interface would be showing how hard my heart was thumping. I felt like I was jogging slowly uphill.

"It’s heavy," I said, and hated how stupid that sounded, but went on confusedly: "Like gravity is heavy. Like it’s pulling everything around it down. Warping it."

"Return Devlin to the surface," Selkie ordered crisply. "And then act as escort to the technicians. Nothing is to be approached until we have every scan imaginable."

I was sent straight to medical, where I was told that I’d been using some sort of Sight talent, probably, maybe. I’d developed a ripping headache by the time we were back on the surface, which is apparently a common symptom of people learning how to use their talents, and made me feel even sorrier for kids inducted into the Setari program. I was stuck with having brain scans for much of the day, but it’s not as if anything much else happened. The technicians were escorted very cautiously down and spent the rest of the day running scans and trying to work out what the heck the room was doing.

And now it’s morning again. I stayed in the Diodel’s medical section under close monitoring overnight, but they’ve let me go. They haven’t the foggiest idea what blurry overlays mean.

Reinforcements

The Litara arrived just after breakfast with what seemed like ten thousand people, including Eighth Squad. I’d had no problems with Eighth when I tested with them or when they were on the Pandora mission, and was glad it was at least a squad I’d worked with. Still, I felt stupidly embarrassed saying hello to them, because I knew that before coming to this assignment they’d have heard all about how someone from Ninth had teased the stray too much and were reprimanded for it. I know that everyone in the Setari must have heard some variation of the story, since the entirety of First Squad sent me worried emails telling me to always let them know if I needed anything, and even Zan sent me a long email updating me on what’s been happening with her, which is Zan’s way of being supportive without poking at my psychological aspects. Zee is much better, and both First and Twelfth Squad are back on Tare doing rotations. They’re no longer posting Setari to guard Pandora because the Ddura does such a good job keeping it safe.

The Litara also brought more Kolarens: mainly archaeologists. There’d been a Kolaren who arrived with Squad One whose job appears to be to watch and report back to Kolar’s government, but before today there wasn’t a significant percentage of Kolarens on site. I’m not certain how this will impact on the balance of the expedition, but it complicated my morning. Islen Duffen had booked me for the morning to tell one of her senior minions everything I knew about tombs, Egyptian burial practices, sarcophagi, and from the sounds of it the complete mythical beliefs of the whole of the Earth. I was already too aware of how little I knew, and particularly worried about mixing up what was history, what was mythology, and what were things I’d seen on Stargate. It did not make it any easier to find myself being interrogated by half a dozen people (four Kolarens, two Tarens) who kept breaking off to argue with each other, and also occasionally disputing the things I was saying, or being impatient and critical because I couldn’t answer all their questions, and still speak relatively slowly and disjointedly.

Arad Nalaz from Squad One was on guard duty, and chose to do his guarding from the rock next to my seat. He really helped a lot. If the interrogation squad got too over the top he’d just turn his head and fix them with this thousand-mile stare with those Lawrence of Arabia eyes and even though it hadn’t seemed like they were paying attention to him at all, they’d abruptly quiet down and remember to be polite to me and at least civil with each other. I made sure to thank him afterwards, and he looked briefly amused but pretended he hadn’t been doing anything at all.

I don’t think my ramblings about Earth myths really helped very much, anyway. I mean, though there’s some similarities, what happened at this site is obviously far different from pyramids with mummified pharaohs sealed inside.

After spending all of yesterday and the whole morning scanning, they decided to leave the fifth level alone until they had analysed the readings which were coming from the central stone, and concentrate on the fourth level. They had Fourth Squad and me play observer while they opened some of the sarcophagi. From which we learned that some had nothing in them, and some had bodies in them which the greysuits think were perhaps burned before being placed in the sarcophagus. The odd thing was that the sarcophagi which weren’t blurry were the ones which had bodies in them.

I still haven’t the faintest idea what the blurriness means. Ruuel told me that I needed to learn how not to use the Sight, and so I had to spend my time trying to get the blurriness to go away. I ended up tired and frustrated. All my so-called talents – of which I seem to have accrued a large and indefinable number – don’t seem to be at all interested in doing anything on my say-so. They just happen.

So do headaches.

Saturday, April 19

Malachite Marbles

Beaten up by Sonn all morning. My bruise collection is growing nicely.

While we trained, Squad One kept on eye on the archaeologists. The sarcophagi on the fifth level were empty as well, and in the afternoon they decided they were going to look closer at the malachite marble, as I think of it. The greysuits call it the power stone.

They couldn’t decide what it did, other than maintain the seal. Because they were very dubious about what would happen if someone touched or tried to manipulate the malachite marble, they had everyone evacuate the whole of the installation, all the way down to the shore. Fortunately the weather was much better today. Then they sent Sonn (for Ena manipulation) and Mori (for teleportation) down to the fifth level alone, carrying an emergency supply of food and water. The idea was that Sonn would use Ena manipulation to try and get the marble to stop maintaining the shield. If the shield responded by overloading the entrances the greysuits had made – or by causing the facility to explode amusingly – Mori would try to teleport them out.

Ruuel hated this plan. He didn’t openly object to it, or look annoyed or anything. But he kept his eyes almost closed the entire time, and what few orders he gave were even more clear and precise than usual. I don’t think Kanato of Eighth liked it either, maybe because he and Mori spent a lot of time yesterday evening talking quietly to each other. I didn’t enjoy the idea of Mori being trapped among the sarcophagi any more than they did – nor Sonn. Sonn doesn’t make it easy for me to like her, but I appreciate the way she approaches my combat training. Well, I wouldn’t like for anyone to be trapped under a mountain, even Fifth Squad.

But nothing bad happened. Whatever else the malachite marble might or might not do, it was obedient enough about removing the seal. Ruuel opened his eyes to half-mast again and nearly caught me watching him (who am I kidding – I’ve really got to stop watching him because I already know how effortlessly he spots such things).

After the seal was gone they did another round of readings and had the various Sight talents touch the marble to try and figure out what it’s for. They all seemed unsettled by it, particularly Halla, and all said pretty much the same thing: dominance. Somehow the marble would give power. Halla said over others, Selkie said over the world around us, and Ruuel wouldn’t say more than just power.

Then, of course, they had me touch it and it gave me a headache. And made everything go blurry. I felt like my bones were vibrating, and had a hard time not vomiting all over the mysterious mystic stone. This was one of the days when I had to struggle to not have a tantrum. Obviously they wanted lots of readings – and because of the Nuran calling me a touchstone and this being a big stone (which makes me feel sick) they spent ages (well, it wasn’t that long, but it felt like forever) until finally Tsur Selkie said I could go back to the ship and have my brain scanned for the ten-hundred-millionth time.

When the medics let me go I still felt sick so I went back to my pod and sulked until I fell asleep and now, of course, I’ve woken up just after everyone’s gone to bed. Must try to get back to sleep so I don’t konk out halfway through tomorrow.

Sunday, April 20

Belonging

So I’m back on Tare.

This whole day has done my head in, starting out with another of the Ruuel-dreams. I was half-awake and knew he was there, but I didn’t have that proper dream-logic which lets you just accept everything no matter how unlikely. I really thought he’d for some reason gotten into my pod with me, and was lying curled against my back. My thoughts were this escalating stream of wtfwtfwtfwtfWTF! and then he leaned forward and I thought he was going to kiss the back of my neck, and I took a great gasping breath, and woke up. I was lying in the same position as I’d been in the dream, just with no Ruuel. And my nanosuit was completely withdrawn into a pad onto my back, so I was wearing only underwear and the uniform harness. The interface isn’t supposed to respond to your commands when you’re asleep, but I guess I must have been just awake enough. I’m so glad I didn’t make the lid of my pod transparent as well.

I went and hid in the shower, thinking about all the ways I could humiliate myself half-asleep, and horrified by the idea of going anywhere near Ruuel. I don’t really know why. Sight Sight is a difficult talent to define, but nothing I’ve seen or read suggests he’d be able to know what I was dreaming when I was inside a shielded pod. It almost certainly shows him that I’m highly embarrassed when I’m around him, but it’s not "Omniscience Sight" or anything close to it.

And it didn’t matter. After half my shower I managed to spare a glance out of Angst Central at the day’s schedule and saw that Fourth had just headed off on another attempt to find a good route through the spaces to Pandora. And then the Litara arrived and Tsur Selkie sent me a message that I was being assigned back to Tare. The wrong dream had come true, in reverse.

I had hardly any time, since the Litara was leaving after a quick drop-off of equipment, and could only numbly dry my hair and grab my bag and something to eat. I did send an email to Fourth saying not much more than goodbye and good luck, which they would have received as soon as they were back in real-space. I’m so glad I’ve been preparing myself and not letting myself think of Fourth as my team again. If nothing else, I can pretend to be pleased to be proven right. But I felt very alone and disconnected on the trip back to Tare, with a whole pod room to myself.

Not quite left to my own devices however, since a greysuit had obviously been assigned to make sure I didn’t go off the rails during the trip. There always seems to be someone now: usually one of the squads, or a greensuit or a greysuit who will pop by and pretend they’re not checking me over for signs of imminent meltdown. It’s hugely annoying, but I guess they felt they’d been forgetting my psychological aspects too much lately. Why they think reassigning the useful stray without warning is a good way of dealing with me is another question.

Not just a useful stray: I’m a multi-purpose stray. I enhance, hear LOUD noises, act as a key to lost civilisations, and see blurry! From the looks of my calendar, I’m going to be Third Squad’s babysitting problem now. Pass the bloody parcel.

There was one good point to counter my gloomy morning. Tsur Selkie had organised a techie guy called Voiz Euka to recreate Earth’s calendar, and I spent an hour with him after my inevitable medical exam, explaining the way Earth measures time, letting him measure the time units from my phone, and working through all the variations of the calendar. He seemed to think it not too difficult an exercise, once we’d properly compared my phone’s seconds and minutes to Tare’s time units, and so now I won’t have to fret about losing my phone. A whole clock and calendar program, written specifically to keep me happy. I even remembered leap years.

And as soon as First Squad heard I was back, they arranged to meet up. They were heading out on rotation soon after I arrived, and I was on a slightly earlier shift to them, but we met at Mara’s quarters when they finished their rotation and had nuna (crepes) for dinner.

It was great to be off-duty and off-record. As off-record as second level monitoring lets me be, anyway. Also fun to not have to wear my uniform, and to eat food which involved a lot of sweetness and not a lot of attention to nutritional value. To be teased by Lohn and hugged by Mara and have Maze be kind and a little worried.

I wasn’t even close to surprised when Zee took me back to my room and interrogated me mercilessly about the whole thing with Ninth Squad. And, to my dismay, about what exactly Fifth and Seventh Squad had done to make me not want to work with them. But she said that my squad preferences weren’t general knowledge, that Maze gets told stuff like that because he’s senior captain, and that she was asking on his behalf.

I really didn’t want to bring Zan into it – I don’t think she’d be at all happy about me talking about the way they bully her – so I just said I’d seen how nasty Kajal and Forel were toward other Setari, and explained about the testing session I’d had with Fifth Squad.

"It’s not that I think they do anything to me," I said. "Just that I think they find it funny if I scared or embarrassed. Going into spaces, need to trust squad more than that."

Zee was more than a little annoyed after reviewing my testing session with Fifth, and said I should have told someone, at least about the part where they went ahead of me in the Ena. And then she asked me if anyone or anything else had made me uncomfortable or unhappy. I gave her an entertaining description of my meeting of Squad One, and she seemed satisfied that I was getting along with most of the Setari.

I’m so glad Zee’s okay. They all looked tired, but I couldn’t spot any new injuries. It’s so messed up that when I meet up with my closest friends here, I check them for damage.

Oh, and it’s Jules' birthday. Happy birthday, brat. Hope you scored lots of loot.

Monday, April 21

Something a little different

Taarel from Third had me meet her for breakfast, and explained what we’d be doing for the next few days. One of the gates from near-space to real-space is in a tremendously inconvenient spot on Unara: a major travel junction. Over the past few decades it’s slowly been growing, and they’ve continually had to increase the size of the lock around it. It’s nearing the point that they’re going to have to do some major infrastructure rejigging if it grows any further, and it already causes a huge amount of blockage and trouble.

Ever since they figured out that with my enhancement there was a possibility of actually closing gates, there’s been an increasing amount of pressure to assign Taarel and me to "closing really annoying gates" duty. The mayor (Lahanti) of Unara, one of the most powerful people on Tare, finally ordered KOTIS to give this particular gate highest priority and get it done. Guess that explains my abrupt reassignment.

The problem was that even with my enhancement, it’s exhausting work and they estimated it would take just Taarel and me weeks to get this Rana Junction gate closed. They decided multiple talents assisting would speed it up, if Taarel initiated a closure, but they couldn’t take off rotation every strong Ena manipulation talent, particularly now KOTIS is posting squads to Muina as well, so they’re using the strongest of the Kalrani Ena manipulation talents instead.

Today was a test day, to see whether a mass effort would work, so after breakfast we met up with the Kalrani who had been selected for the experiment. There were ten, all very correct in their brown and cream uniforms. The youngest looked about twelve and the oldest the same age as me: probably one of the candidates for Fourteenth Squad. Thirteenth Squad has already been chosen and is on pre-rotation training and has moved into the rooms on the same floor as me, though I haven’t seen any of them about yet.

They all seemed to know Taarel, at least to say good day Tsee Taarel to. I hadn’t thought about it, but the graduated Setari would be the logical candidates to give the Kalrani some expert tutoring. And of course before the Setari had qualified for their squads, they’d been Kalrani as well. Since it was Taarel, I wasn’t surprised that most of them couldn’t quite hide being awestruck by her presence, and were more than a little nervous and determined to be excellent for her.

They didn’t know how to treat me. I’m a curiosity and the prospect of a massive increase of power. I wondered if they’d heard about Ninth Squad, and politely said hello back when they greeted me, and otherwise kept my mouth shut, even when I saw that the test session was in my old room in the medical facility, and the gate they were testing closure techniques on was the one I’d torn into near-space. It was very strange seeing my old room-with-a-view with a thick metal gate-lock built around where my bed had been. They’d removed one of the walls, but there still wasn’t much room for the twelve of us, and I had to be careful about where I was standing.

Taarel took them through the touching-the-stray rules, then enhanced herself and started the closing process. Once she’d demonstrated, she had each of the Kalrani enhance and try in turn to close the gate just by themselves. I found this very dull, even with a projection of the gate for me to look at, and so it was simply a procession of serious kids frowning at the air. One of the Kalrani, a boy about fourteen called Dayn, managed to start it closing. It meant so much to him, and he was trying so hard not to show it that he went white and then red when Taarel gave him one of those brief, approving nods which Ruuel does so well, except Taarel adds a warm smile. Taarel is definitely charisma-plus.

After that, she enhanced again and started working on closing the gate properly, telling each of the Kalrani to enhance and join in one by one. They can’t work on it continuously, needing to rest sooner than the five minutes my enhancement lasts, with long recovery times. But still, in less than a kasse they’d completely closed the thing, and were all looking tremendously exhausted. But very pleased.

After that were medical tests for all, heh, and Taarel told me that we were likely to be cleared to head to Unara tomorrow. Then I slept all afternoon and for the second time since I came back to Tare I dreamed of wandering around KOTIS, through endless empty corridors, looking for Ruuel.

Back in Year 10, Alyssa fell for a guy named Kyle Marcus. He was the sort who ends up Dux of the school, playing violin recitals, and winning debating prizes, but fun enough that hardly anyone hated him for it. Alyssa and Kyle were both on the student group helping organise the joint Year 10 Formal with Agowla and the Boy’s Tech, and she spent the entire term being her brightest, funniest self: chatting with him, putting up all the signals. But when the term was over, and he’d passed up going to the after-party she’d arranged, she gave up. She said it would be embarrassing for them both if she ran after him like a dog in heat.

I don’t want to run after someone who doesn’t want me. And I’ve been trying very hard not to think about Ruuel, or write about him, and I try to avoid sitting around looking at log images of him because I’m sure what files I access is part of second level monitoring as well. But I keep having these dreams and when I wake up all I can think about is that he’s not there. That he’s not just one pod over. That he’s not even on the same planet as me, and if I cried out for him he wouldn’t come. It’s so pathetic.

Ruuel has never encouraged me in the remotest way, never shown any interest in me beyond carrying out his captain-duties. Unfortunately, I can’t simply make a sane, logical decision to not want him, and so I’ve spent the past couple of days feeling miserable and being frustrated with myself. Because Ruuel, who has never sat down to chat with me or spent any effort trying to socialise with me, isn’t here. I miss just being near him.

Taarel is too good a captain not to notice I’m down, but she’s also smart enough not to push. She keeps an eye on me, treats me with consideration, but otherwise just gives me opportunities to talk to her. Of course, Taarel’s the last person I’d tell about my feelings for Ruuel. Too humiliating if she had to gently break it to me that she’s engaged to him. If Taarel and Ruuel are a couple, right now I just don’t want to know.

Ghost was with me when I woke, which helped considerably. I have as much hope of smuggling her with me to Unara as I did to Muina, but I wish I could. Even though she’s only the echo of a memory, she’s such a normal cat: smart and mischievous, loves being scratched behind her ears, purrs and acts like she missed me. And she’s mine, in a way very little is here. Petting her was the best stupid thing I ever did.

Tuesday, April 22

What would Wikipedia say?

In among the make-believe there seems to now be a handful of truth about me in the public domain. I read all about myself this morning, finding dozens of interface spaces devoted to me, just like the Setari watch sites. And I have an encyclopaedia entry. No real pictures of me at all, thankfully, although there’s some quite accurate drawings. I wasn’t surprised to see that some of Nenna’s friends had recorded meeting Nenna’s guest stray, but it seems that you can’t record images of strays any more than you can images of Setari. Strays count as protected incompetents until they’ve passed various tests. But they could record my voice, and the outline of me, and it was squirmy awful hearing me trying to speak in Taren back then. I was so slow, and my pronunciation was dreadful and I kept using the wrong words and totally wrong grammar. It’s a wonder anyone could understand me at all. I’m still not close to fluent, and wouldn’t be able to speak it properly without the interface, but I’m clear enough now.

My encyclopaedia entry says:

"Kaszandra Devlin. Born approximately 15 Denn 3732, city of Oztralya, planet Urth. Passed through natural gate to Muina approximately 40 Ord 3785. Located by Setari exploratory team on 2 Arn 3785, at ruins site Goralath, and processed as displaced person. Identified as enhancement talent and assigned to assist Setari. On 32 Nayz 3786 provided identification clearance to Setari squad under attack by Ddura at Goralath, effectively unlocking the planet of Muina for resettlement."

I had a good laugh at the city of Oztralya and read through the entries for Urth and Pandora, which sadly did not include anything about releasing all the evils of the world. There was tons more on the less official sites. A good deal of the initial hostility toward me seems to have died down after the sister planet explanation, but it’s a thousand percent obvious I’m never going to have anything remotely resembling a normal life on this planet. If I were at all unclear on that point.

KOTIS has released a handful of statements about my discovery on Muina, and how I’d been working with the Setari, but what I’d been doing recently was definitely not public knowledge. In fact, there was nothing on the public networks about the Arenrhon installation at all, let alone the Nuran. I’m betting they’ll keep it quiet as long as they can.

Tons on Pandora, though. The settlement has grown enormously: multiple buildings up and running, and more under construction. Even some that aren’t blocky squares. Pandora’s focus has become more about learning to live on the planet, rather than unlocking the secrets of its past, and they’re cataloguing the plants and the animals and testing out crops. It looks utterly gorgeous, with the leaves vivid reds and golds and the lake a slate-blue colour. Everyone not too freaked out by the thought of being outside really wants to go there. There’s even a competition, where the prize is getting to visit.

We’re starting for Unara late this afternoon. I’ve been in a very non-talky mood. I need to deliver Pollyanna instead of Gloomzilla.

Into the breach

We didn’t start out for Unara until quite late in my day, and it felt very much like a school outing with the Kalrani in their cream and brown uniforms lined up before the entrance of a small arrowhead-shaped tanz. Space-aged school bus. The Kalrani were, if anything, even more stiff and upright than yesterday, making Rite Orla and Tol Sefen from Third look positively laidback as they strolled up just before me. The half of Third without Combat Sight gets to go on leave, but Orla and Sefen are stuck with helping baby-sit – guarding against any Ionoth which have been missed by the sweeps and come lurching out of the gate at us. There were also a handful of greysuits and greensuits, but Taarel was most definitely in charge, and started us out with a crisp briefing about the arrangements for getting us to and from the gate-lock, and what we should do if anyone somehow gets separated. She thinks the job will take one to two weeks (twelve days).

One of the oldest Kalrani, a girl named Pen Alaz, piped up at the end of the briefing and asked Taarel if it was true gate closure would become a regular task. I could see from the way a few of the Kalrani leaned forward that this was an important question to them. I expect, given how long they’ve trained to go into the Ena and fight Ionoth, the idea of a career in world-wall repairs was as dull as it sounded to me.

"It won’t happen," Taarel replied, clear, crisp and serious. "Rana Junction is a useful exercise for us, but those who propose more have not fully appreciated the current situation. New gates are tearing at increased rates. Ionoth numbers are multiplying. On some rotations we’re facing doubled, even tripled populations. That is a situation which is only going to get worse, and we need to throw everything we have into a solution, because if the current rate is maintained, in a five-year KOTIS will be building locks not around gates, but around the few places without gates."

"Is the increase because of the shutdown of the Pillar?" Alaz asked.

"No," Taarel said, before I could do more than mentally flinch. "If anything, turning off that Pillar appears to have bought us a minor reprieve, as well as giving us the first real evidence that the Pillars are connected to the continuing fragmentation of the wall between near-space and real-space. In all the time we’ve kept exact records of them, there has been a slight yearly increase in the number of new gates formed, and the widening of existing gates. Fractional amounts, but undeniable. This past five-year there’s been a marked rise, accompanied by a surge in Ionoth population. Inconveniently located gates are nothing to the need to arrest this deterioration, so don’t concern yourself with talk of gate-closing assignments. There isn’t time for that."

Taarel doesn’t pussyfoot around. Though the increase in gate and Ionoth numbers isn’t a secret, and has been reported in the news outside KOTIS, this was the first time I’d heard anyone be quite so blunt in their assessment of what it meant. No wonder they’re throwing everything at Muina, pouring people and resources onto a planet they wouldn’t even set foot on a few months ago. KOTIS is racing disaster.

Wednesday, April 23

A bit of an audience

Taarel’s talk yesterday put my he-doesn’t-like-me whine into perspective, and I at least partially succeeded in throwing off my gloom. It helped that Orla and Sefen from Third are willing to chat to me while they sit around being vaguely alert for attack. The Kalrani all listened intently to our rambling conversation, but for whatever reason they haven’t said a word to me other than when we were introduced.

Rana Junction went way beyond my expectations of busy. Located in the very centre of Unara, it’s a mega-city’s worth of Grand Central Station. If you want to get from one major segment of the city to another you travel in to Rana Junction and then out to wherever. All roads lead to Rana Junction, basically. So having a metal box the size of a two-story suburban house crowding out one of the main concourses in the Junction – where people travel from one line to another – is a complete pain in the ass for everyone involved. While their nanotech allows the Tarens to reshape sections of their city comparatively easily, changing Rana Junction would make for major headaches.

There’s little private transport in Unara: it’s all trains and elevators and travelator walkways. Emergency and military services and a few very rich people have these zippy individual carriages which can whiz around on any of the lines in between the normal services, and shunt off into special short slots to get them out of the way. We travelled from the place we’re staying – a weird government hotel – in one of these solo carriages and walked fifty or so metres under an escort of Unara’s police force to where the lock around the gate was waiting for us, the entrance under a little tent. They hadn’t officially announced anything about Setari trying to close gates, but we were all in uniform and the reaction from the crowd was intense. Unlike the Setari’s home island, most people on Unara have never had a chance to glimpse a flesh-and-blood Setari, and even on Konna it’s rare to see them in uniform. Usually the only time the Setari go out in Tare’s cities in uniform is when they’re killing Ionoth which have reached real-space, and that involves a lot of alerts and evacuations.

Having hundreds of people double-take, walk slower, or just plain stop and stare made for some serious congestion. The person in charge of the set-up – a fussy, bearded guy called Marda who worked for the transport department – ushered us hurriedly into the big tent and spent a lot of time quacking to the long-suffering woman in charge of the police detachment about making sure the foot traffic kept flowing. I’m pretty sure Marda didn’t believe the Setari would be able to close the gate, and thought the entire exercise just an unnecessary complication of his already complicated job.

The gate-lock was a larger version of the usual metal box with bonus scanning equipment and what I presume is weaponry, but they’d prepared for the several days we’d have to spend in it by decking it out with low, soft chairs, and tables with food and hot drinks, and even a porta-potty in one corner. It looked truly odd, arranged around the big empty patch left by the gate.

One of the first things Taarel did was have Anasi – a delicate-looking boy of fifteen – use Illusion to show the current outline of the gate. She could have just used the interface to show everyone what she was seeing with Gate Sight, but I think this may have been more effective for our observers. The gate was enormous, much larger than the one they’d closed yesterday, and was starting to break through the floor of the gate-lock, like an invisible tree root.

The fuss outside grew the entire time we were there. I kept an eye on the gossip channels and Setari-devotee channels, and almost immediately had outside views of the tent entrance and its guards. We hadn’t been there more than ten minutes before the transit authority switched the entire concourse to a no loitering zone, which meant that if you stayed in the area they wanted kept clear for more than five minutes without special clearance, or kept coming back to the area, a deterrent noise would start playing through your interface, growing in volume the longer you hung about. The rare few who could stand that were flagged personal escort out of the area.

There were a couple of cafés on the far side of the concourse which didn’t fall into the keep-clear area and they abruptly became the busiest cafés on the planet, eventually needing police assistance to control their customer volume. The news channels began reporting the story within five minutes of our arrival, and managed to wring an official statement from the transit authority about the gate-closing (which didn’t mention me, but speculation about me being here immediately reached the point of unofficially confirmed – people have a very good idea of the limits of the Setari’s strength, and obviously they’ve never been known to close gates before). Some people were excited by the idea of seeing me, but most were far more interested in the Setari. And I think the Kalrani were considered even more exciting. There’s no recorded sightings of them outside KOTIS in uniform.

Taarel, totally unconcerned by the fuss outside, kept today’s session to one and a half kasse, dropping out the younger Kalrani after the first kasse. When she called a stop, and had Anasi display the current size of the gate, it was maybe a little more than a fifth gone.

"Another four sessions," she said to Marda, who was staring up at the revised gate outline as if he’d only just decided that this might work.

There was a delay while they made arrangements for us to leave: moving our carriage so that it could zip out and slot behind whatever train was arriving at the nearby platform, and having the police set up this very handy containment wall involving a double row of seven-foot sticks on stands which produced a blurring shield. This, of course, totally gave away our imminent departure and abruptly absolute thousands of people started to flood onto the concourse. The news channels later said that they’d been waiting in surrounding streets. The noise was incredible, this echoing excited chatter. The police had been given plenty of opportunity to assess the potential fuss, and we were in no danger of being overrun, but I feel sorry for them handling the security headache this is causing.

The crowd roared and cheered when we emerged. Taarel responded with a brief smile and nod in the general direction of the masses, but then kept us moving the short distance to the platform and through the door to the private section. She kept her attention on the Kalrani, making sure they weren’t too overwhelmed and didn’t lag, while Orla and Sefen bracketed me. It seemed a much longer walk than it had on the way in.

Everyone except Orla and Sefen was exhausted. I managed not to fall asleep on the train back, but as soon as I reached my hotel room I dropped and slept for four hours – as I expect all the Ena manipulation talents did, except Taarel, who paid the price of being captain and had to talk to people first. Fortunately, it’s not just us along: with a half-dozen KOTIS support staff we’ve plenty of people to keep things running through the frequent napping. There’s an evening meal scheduled half an hour from now, and then medical exams, bleh.

I was vaguely hoping that maybe I could go shopping while we were here – buying things over the interface just doesn’t compare – but I don’t see how it’ll be possible.

Thursday, April 24

Zzz

Today was a repeat of yesterday, except that the crowds were expecting us back. We went several hours earlier in an attempt to avoid the worst and tomorrow we’re going during a later shift to give the Ena manipulation talents more rest. They’re even considering skipping a day if necessary. I do wonder why they didn’t try and disguise everyone, rather than cause such a circus, but I guess the interface makes that kind of difficult, and certainly the location of the gate and the fact that Tare doesn’t have a night when most everyone goes home means that not wearing our uniforms wouldn’t have hidden very much at all after the first day.

I spent a large part of today feeling very self-conscious. Yesterday gave a huge number of people a chance to look at the stray who unlocked Muina. And air their opinions about her. They couldn’t get too close, and don’t seem to have spotted that my eyes are different colours, but there was a lot of talk about me being so suyul, and it was amazing how uncomfortable that made me.

A suyul is a droopy, pale pink flower, and by calling me that they were saying I acted shy. Just as on Earth there’s a stereotype of people who are red-headed being temperamental, on Tare people who are white-skinned are stereotyped as shy and bashful and a bit wimpy. It didn’t help that after the first appalled glance yesterday I kept my eyes down and blushed madly. It was just too many people, too loud, and too overwhelming.

I couldn’t make myself not read all these comments about me. And it left me weirdly conscious not of how I looked, but of how everyone else does. Practically everyone I know here looks Asian. Of the people I’m close to, only Lohn and Zan look primarily Caucasian, with maybe a hint of mix around their eyes. It wasn’t something I’d given more than an occasional thought to until all these comments about my skin colour.

I’ve spent way too much of today trying to work out if I’m racist, or just annoyed because I am a bit shy and not good at fighting.

Friday, April 25

Something to Say

At the end of today’s shift I walked into my hotel room wanting only a shower and then to curl up for a thousand hours, and there was a man waiting for me.

That startled the hell out of me, more because I was tired and wasn’t expecting it than anything he did, which was smile and start talking. I froze for a moment, then stepped backward out of my room, for once remembering to set off my alert. Only after I did that did his words filter through to me: he was introducing himself and saying he wanted to interview me, to give me an opportunity to speak outside the control of KOTIS. And seconds later Sefen and Taarel were there, suit weapons out and looking extremely dangerous. Orla arrived a few moments after that, then one of our greensuit escort, and then a half dozen more people: a hotel security woman and more of our escort and most of the Kalrani.

I ended up feeling sorry for the reporter guy. The Setari didn’t attack him, being more intent on making sure they were between me and him. Combat Sight obviously didn’t classify him as a threat. He put his hands out palm up to show he wasn’t planning anything, but the greensuit wrestled him to the ground anyway, and put a knee in his back. Then hotel security and one of the pinksuits helpfully piled into the room and I think he was stood on a bit.

Taarel began to usher me away, but I said: "Wait," to her and stood my ground until there was a lull in the noise, then said: "Am not under duress. But thanks for the offer." I’m not entirely sure he heard me.

Taarel gathered all of the Kalrani up as she went, some of them looking painfully tired, and stowed us in a big lounge. She disappeared for a few minutes, leaving Sefen and Orla still alertly on guard in case any more attack reporters showed up, then came back and said we were going to be moved to another floor. She gave the Kalrani a thorough survey – they were being all wide-eyed and battle-ready, which was more than disconcerting from the younger ones – then corralled me off to a couch to one side and asked me if he’d touched me, if I was hurt. Since we’d gone off-mission I didn’t have a log Taarel could access with her security level.

"He just want to talk, I think," I said, helpfully sending her the segment of my non-mission log which showed me walking in and back out of my room. "Sorry about alert. I was surprised and didn’t realise he was just reporter."

"The alert was exactly the right reaction," Taarel said, eyes abstract as she reviewed my log. "Reporter or not: to get into your room he has to have by-passed security in ways that are by no definition legal."

"Moving so that rooms can be scanned?"

"And also because our location isn’t supposed to be known. They will make it appear that we have relocated to another building entirely, but it will only be to a different floor."

The adrenaline surge wore off very rapidly, and I fell asleep on the couch, waking up hours later in a different room. I don’t like being shifted about while I’m asleep. Or people touching my bag. I don’t know if the reporter pawed through my stuff, but nothing was missing, and my diary and phone seemed fine. I presume it had all been scanned as well. Fortunately there were no delays or extra security before eating, because I was absolutely starving. And the day’s drama even prompted a couple of the Kalrani to talk to me, started off by one of the oldest two, a girl my age named Pen Alaz, asking: "Why did you thank him?"

Alaz isn’t exactly friendly and cheery, but she doesn’t give off a malicious vibe either. She’s a bit like Jenny from my maths class – super-smart, but not quite socialised, with a tendency to ask abrupt questions without any thought to whether they’re rude or not, but just because it’s occurred to her to want to know.

I swallowed my mouthful (really weird brown sticky bread that tasted like congealed vegemite). "Because he was offering to help me if I needed it. Mostly wanted good story, I expect, but I appreciated the gesture."

"A would-be rescuer, in fact," said the other of the oldest Kalrani, a guy called Tahan Morel. He’s tall with sharp brown eyes under straight dark brows, and a very expressive wide mouth. Not hostile, but with an edge of sarcastic challenge which is pretty refreshing compared to the way most people treat me. "You didn’t have anything you wanted to tell the world?"

I thought about it. "Only that that official encyclopaedia spells Australia really badly."

He laughed. "That’s not the story that reporter was looking for, I’d bet."

"You really have nothing to complain of?" Alaz asked, sounding disbelieving.

"Sure. Complain lots about combat training. Hate that can’t go anywhere by myself. Loathe second level monitoring. Don’t see what good would do telling any of that to reporter."

"I don’t recall anyone noting complaints about your combat training," Taarel said, looking amused.

"Mara said pulling faces counted as complaining."

Unfortunately that made Taarel schedule some combat training for us tomorrow morning, though she has to find a suitable room for it. It was good to have more people willing to talk to me. I wonder whether it will be Alaz or Morel who ends up in Fourteenth Squad.

The whole thing with the reporter made me realise that hordes of them have probably asked to interview me. That random people were surely trying to contact me, for whatever reason, and that KOTIS just doesn’t pass any of that on to me. I’m not sure if that bothers me or not.

Saturday, April 26

Positive outcomes

Maze opened a channel to me last night after dinner. Mainly to chat about the reporter, but also about me generally and what was likely to happen to me over the next few years. Not that he can be really certain what will happen, but he could confirm that there wasn’t a chance in hell that I’d be going anywhere without minders. I talked a little about the complete lack of control I have over anything I do, and how I understood that the restrictions were for my protection, but it was just occasionally it got to me.

Happily we moved on to the work being done on Muina, and it was nice to realise that Maze was excited by what’s been happening there. A little confused by Arenrhon, but not upset by the implication that the Lantarens were even more arrogant than everyone had realised. Like the discovery of the Pillar, he saw Arenrhon as a chance to uncover the mechanics of the problem. It was, he said, better to learn more before turning off any more Pillars, because we really had no idea whether turning off the Pillars would necessarily fix the problem. But while he agreed with Taarel’s assessment of the need for urgency, they now at least had the prospect of achieving more than simply fighting continually increasing numbers of Ionoth.

"And," he added just before saying goodbye, "locating your planet hasn’t stopped being a high priority simply because the Nuran told us your talent set is beyond rare. Since we know there’s a natural gate in Pandora’s general region, there are standing orders for any Path Sight talents to try to locate it."

Maze was upbeat, but I could tell he was tired. I’m continuing to try to keep my dramas down to a minimum, because I’m one of the things which worries him a lot.

This morning was combat training in a conference room, squished between a small stage and chairs stacked along one wall. I’m sure Taarel simply wanted the Kalrani to get a little exercise to balance all the exhausting themselves with Ena manipulation they’ve been doing, but that didn’t mean she went easy on us.

I’m at such a basic level, still trying to consistently block a simple attack. The twelve year-olds could have taken me down easily, but Taarel partnered me herself. I can’t tell how good she is – everyone seems so deadly to me – but she was a patient teacher, encouraging but relentless in pushing me to be more aggressive. She told me afterwards that I needed to overcome my reluctance to hit people. I hadn’t thought about it that way before, but I think she’s right: I do flinch away from the idea of landing blows. I like working with Taarel, though she acts as if I’m a couple of years younger than I am.

We’ve grown used to the fuss at the Junction, which shows no sign of dying down, no matter how we move our arrival and departure times, or how brief our actual appearance is. The atmosphere inside the tent has changed: we’re all chatting a little more. Muina remains the main topic of conversation, and we talk over the latest news releases. The exploratory teams are constantly expanding the known world of Muina, sending back some spectacular visuals from their aerial surveys. It’s a beautiful world, and most of it lush and green with fewer of the dry, arid sections so common on Earth. Not so much huge interrupted ocean, either, but a more even distribution of land and lakes.

One day of this left, and tomorrow looks to be a short day. There’s maybe a tenth to go and we plan to finish it off just after breakfast.

Sunday, April 27

Unara thanks you

It’s done. I think the people most relieved are the police security detail, though I’ll bet the Kalrani are also glad to see the end of it. The area will be closely monitored for years, in case the gate re-opens, but by the time we were back at the hotel in the middle of our post-session medical exams they were already dismantling the big metal lock which has been taking up half the concourse for decades. The news services had plenty of happy warbling by officials in interviews, and excited comments from Setari-watchers about what everyone had looked like, and the fact that as we trailed off for the last time Kinear – one of a set of twelve year-old twins who would be mischievous if they weren’t Kalrani – turned and waved goodbye to the humungous audience.

And just when I thought it was all over, Taarel came to tell me that the Lahanti (mayor of Unara) has invited us to dinner, although it will be more afternoon teatime for us. We’re going off to shop for clothes in a few minutes.

Monday, April 28

Dinner Conversation

Yesterday was one part fun, two parts uncomfortable. Pampering and fuss and then the kind of glitzy meal which would make Mum produce dry comments, but with people I didn’t know or particularly like.

I’m not altogether sure why we couldn’t just wear our uniforms to dinner, but I by no means minded going off to a boutique store opposite our hotel to try on dresses, despite the fusspot aide from the Lahanti’s office who was in charge of making us suitable. Tare might be a meritocracy, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s all sunshine and equality. Being rich is still a bigger thing than being smart.

The aide – Nona Maersk – didn’t seem to think much of the Setari, but it took Taarel maybe two minutes to get the woman eating out of her hand. Taarel has a kind of radiant self-confidence and warmth of spirit which is very difficult to resist. That looks weird written down, but it’s the best I can describe Taarel. She also looked phenomenally awesome in a dark green, velvety-textured dress, with her hair done up in a curling knot. I had something which shimmered between purple and blue and red depending on the angle, and I liked the way I looked in it, except that it made my repaired eye look even more purple.

Maersk’s attitude towards me was disjointed. She treated me as the guest of honour (Taarel, Sefen, Orla, Morel, Alaz and I were going), but she also treated me like I was five. Speaking very clearly and slowly, and also sometimes talking to Taarel about me as if I wasn’t in the room. I amused myself by pretending that I could barely understand her, and speaking incredibly fractured Taren – at least until Taarel opened a private channel and told me to stop.

I considered not doing as I was told, just to see how she’d go about getting me to be good, but instead replied over the channel: "Can I ask you possibly impolite question?"

"Ask, always. My response will depend on the question."

"Why do you wear your hair in such difficult style? Doesn’t it take a lot effort to keep up, especially when spaces flooded or rain on you?"

Taarel laughed, not offended. On Tare, no-one finds it strange at all if you suddenly smile or laugh at nothing. The voices in your head are quite real here.

"It’s an exercise in Ena manipulation," she told me. My hair had been brushed out but not styled yet, and she reached over a finger and made a long strand of it curl just by touching it. "Ena manipulation is primarily used on the gates, but if we wanted to spend the time and effort we could effect the structure of the spaces themselves. More difficult is to alter that which is not of the Ena. It is possible, but takes a great deal of strength and control. Once it was beyond me to move a single strand, and to arrange my hair became not only something of a boast, but a daily practice." She looked amused, and added out loud: "Sometimes I don’t style it as I normally do, and my squad does not recognise me."

"I don’t recognise you now," Sefen said, and blushed bright red. He totally worships Taarel. "Nor myself," he added.

Formal clothing for guys on Tare doesn’t resemble Earth’s penguin suit at all. It’s mostly in pale natural colours, with long narrow-leg pants, soft shoes, and a shift and coat which goes down to about knee-length. Vaguely Middle-Eastern, but no turbans that I’ve seen yet. Female dresses are more what I’m used to, except with a tendency for multiple layers.

I returned to the private channel and asked: "Is there anything Unara Lahanti doesn’t know about, which I should not talk about?"

"The Lahanti will have been kept fully apprised," Taarel said, sounding thoughtful. "But as for other guests – it would be best to follow the Lahanti’s lead. Discuss any topic she raises. Remember, if anything happens that concerns or confuses you, open a channel to me."

I spent the rest of the time asking about table manners, just as I would if I were sent to have dinner with the Queen on half a day’s notice. A single-carriage train even plusher than my hotel room took us to the official residence’s own station, and the Kalrani and Setari, except for the unshakeably at-ease Taarel, went extremely po-faced and upright, like they were on parade, which looked very odd when they weren’t in uniform. The room we were taken to was already crowded with people, and I think I was introduced to all of them. Only my log is going to remember any of that.

The Lahanti of Unara is called Sebreth Tanay. She looked younger than I expected, in her forties, and had disconcertingly clear grey eyes, very unusual on Tare. She reminded me a little of Isten Notra, with the same incisive intelligence, though I didn’t feel nearly as drawn to her or comfortable with her.

Not that the Lahanti was nasty to me or anything, and I wasn’t sitting there thinking she was evil. But she wasn’t interested in me so much as my effect on her world and the problems and benefits I represented. I was placed next to her for dinner and after the usual questions about my first few weeks on Muina, she interrogated me about Earth. Population, form of government, weapons capability, complete lack of verifiable psychic talents, likely reaction to Tarens showing up. Most of her questions I’d been asked before, and my answers were probably in reports she’d read, but I speak Taren better than the first time I was asked, so I suppose it wasn’t a complete waste to grill me directly. The thing I had to keep emphasising was how disparate Earth was, that there would be no unified response to the Tarens, even from a single country, let alone the entire planet. I kept barely getting a chance to taste each of the courses they brought out because the Lahanti kept me struggling to answer the entire time.

The dinner seemed to be serving two purposes: to let the Lahanti and a couple of other government types get a better handle of what Earth was like, and to let the Lahanti’s children talk to real live Setari. I didn’t hear much of what they were chatting about, but the son was laying some full-on charm on Taarel and I think the two daughters were thinking of renaming Morel morsel and having him for dinner.

I’m glad I didn’t have to face today back when I could barely speak the language. I’m pretty sure most of my answers used the right words and only slightly idiotic grammar. I’m also glad that the Kalrani were so obviously tired, so we didn’t have to stick it out too long.

And we can keep the dresses! I am so tempted to draw my lab rat on mine, just to see people’s reactions, but my role has mutated enough that my lab rat doesn’t really fit anymore. I’m an enhancing dousing rod now – they poke me at alien ruins and see what happens. We’re flying back to KOTIS headquarters, and I’ll be glad to be in my apartment again. I hope Ghost’s waiting for me.

Tuesday, April 29

Here and There

My schedule for the next week has been set: I’m flying back to Muina tomorrow, as are Third Squad. Third Squad are going to Arenrhon to relieve Fourth, who’ve been on continuous duty for a very long time now. Third is dropping me off at Pandora on the way, to take part in an intensive investigation of the platform there and how it works as a communicator. Which means lots of headaches for me, which I can’t say I’m at all pleased about.

I spent a big chunk of my day curled up in bed, having Ghost purr for me and thinking about a life scheduled and arranged by committee. The only person who has offered me a choice since the Nuran is a reporter I ended up getting arrested. If I pushed, could I get more say in what I do and where I go?

Must keep in mind that obediently standing where I’m put is still far better than independent and starving on Muina.

Wednesday, April 30

Now and Then

Eeli is so funny. She’s been home visiting her family (Kalrani and Setari do get proper holidays and to visit their families and so forth – KOTIS is like a big strict military boarding school, not a prison) and was in a fever of joy about seeing her younger brother and sister. But she was so chagrined that she missed out on playing dress-ups, and seeing half her squad in fancy clothes, that she could barely manage two sentences without looking at the log images again and wishing she’d been there and saying how wonderful everyone looked.

I was given a little present before the Litara started out – Euka had finished my Earth clock and calendar program and it’s all installed. He told me that I should make comparisons with the clock on my phone to make sure he had everything right, and to let him know if there were any adjustments. He’d mimicked the look of my phone’s clock and calendar very exactly, although using Tare-characters instead of Earth-characters. Hard to believe it’s the end of April already. More than five months, now.

I’m a different person. Yet I’m still me. A lot of the things I used to think were interesting seem so stupid in retrospect. All that time wasted watching reality TV. I still miss Earth music, though I’m getting a little more into Taren songs now that the language isn’t such a chore. I miss my favourite books, and I wish I knew what happened next on a lot of TV shows and web comics, and there were a few movies coming up that I wanted to see. I’m feeling more and more disconnected from my own world, and yet still in no way Taren.

It bugs me that I’m basically swapping planets with Fourth Squad. Not just because of Ruuel. I’m still dreaming about Ruuel every night, but I’m hoping that a long patch of not seeing him will cure me. The problem is Fourth is the squad I’ve connected with the most outside of First. Particularly Mori, who I think I was becoming a sort of friend. But between shifts, and assignments on different planets, and assignments to different squads, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to overcome the barrier that second level monitoring already raises.

Thinking about that, and wishing I could send Alyssa a letter asking how she’s going, prompted me to write to Nenna again, even though she didn’t answer me last time. We’re about to arrive at Pandora, so she won’t get it till tomorrow at the earliest, but I hope she writes back. The Lents were so nice to me, and it’ll never stop bothering me that I ended up hurting them.

Time to go be poked at mysterious alien installations. Hopefully they won’t expect me to stand about getting headaches for too long.

May

Saturday, May 3

Two Steps Forward, Ten Steps Back

New resolutions:

1. Always carry full Setari equipment.

2. Find a lighter.

3. Be careful what I wish for.

Monday, May 5

Extended dodging and swimming practice

It was just on dawn at Pandora when I arrived with Third Squad. My labrattery session wasn’t for a couple of hours, so Taarel handed me over to two greensuits who were to be my primary babysitters: Esem and Hetz. They were a younger and older guy, polite, but super po-faced, making me sorry that Third Squad left almost immediately with the Litara. I would have loved to listen to Eeli’s reaction to Pandora’s changes. It’s grown so big, I could hardly believe it: still plenty of tents, but dozens of buildings in varying stages of growth and fit-out. My greensuits showed me to a room in the main building, just a bed and a shelf, but with a window looking over the lake. I left my things, ate a little lunch/breakfast, and asked if I could go for a walk along the lake since I wanted to visit my otters, to make sure their stream was undisturbed. Esem nixed that idea – I’d have to schedule any departure from Pandora – but was quite amenable to taking me to look at my old tower while we were waiting for my first appointment.

It gave me a very eerie feeling to explore the old village, to check out how far the cleaning-up project has advanced. They’ve been concentrating on the buildings around the central amphitheatre section, removing encroaching plants and encrusting dirt, cataloguing the objects but leaving all but the most fragile in place. I kept peering through the windows expecting to see people who belong here, instead of greysuits and greensuits. They’re even planning to restore the gardens, because the whole town is going to be a museum site. So is my tower, but as Fort Cass, part of the history of the stray who unlocked the world. That spun me out, and I’m still not sure whether to be upset or amused that they’re turning a piece of me into a tourist site. My blanket, mats and pots look incredibly pathetic.

Far too soon, Esem and Hetz herded me to the amphitheatre, where I was introduced to the small group of technicians who were going to give me headaches. They were all eager to start work: it seems they’ve been waiting for some considerable time to get their hands on me. The cats have all moved out, off to a part of the town which isn’t being worked on yet. But I’d noticed two or three in Pandora: kittens kidnapped and adopted, and one or two slightly less feral adults on the look-out for food.

The technicians explained that they were investigating how the platform operated and where the aether went when it flowed down to it. Since I could hear the Ddura, they were hoping that they’d be able to get clearer or different reading of the platform’s operation when I was in contact with it.

"Simply try to communicate with the Ddura as you have previously," said Jelan Scal, the geeky guy in charge. "I know that the volume of the Ddura is painful for you, so we’ll keep the sessions as short as possible. What we want is quality, not quantity. We’ve found that we take much clearer readings from subjects standing on the platform, so we’ll monitor the platform’s reactions with you there until the Ddura arrives, and then we’ll keep you for only a brief exchange. Ready?"

I nodded, and walked up the stair onto the platform, betting that the brief exchange would end up much longer and hoping that the Ddura was by now so used to there being Muinans again that it would listen to me when I told it to shut up. I turned to Jelan Scal, who looked pleased and started to say something, and then he disappeared.

For a moment I really thought that Scal – and everyone else in the room and all the machinery – had just vanished. But of course it was the other way around, as glowing walls and the big hole in the back of the room made obvious. It was a different platform room, broken and split, with a chunk of floor and back wall missing so I could see I was perched beside a drop to a big flooded chamber. I walked to the edge of the platform, peering down, and could see what looked like some kind of cistern system, the water quite clear, with low outlet tunnels.

Not inviting. I shook my head and tried to work out how to leave. Just wanting to go didn’t work. I walked back into the centre of the platform and wanted very hard, and that didn’t work either. And then I looked up, feeling uncomfortable, and there was a Cruzatch crawling along the ceiling toward me.

Wanting really, really a lot to leave didn’t help either.

The Cruzatch was moving quickly, completely upside-down: Spiderman with a burning Cheshire Cat grin. I didn’t have a whole lot of choices. I sure as hell wasn’t going to fight it. I didn’t seem able to conveniently teleport back to Pandora. So I turned and dived into the water.

It was a long drop, and the water shockingly cold, but I entered clean, angling toward one of rectangular outlets. They were a fair distance and I knew I wouldn’t be able to reach them, let alone swim through one, without surfacing for air. I paused, floating underwater as I peered upward, and couldn’t see anything behind or above me. The ceiling and the wall above the outlet was empty of grinning black shapes and so I swam hastily upward, surfaced just long enough to take a huge breath, then dove again.

I felt a jolt on my heel, then a grip on my ankle, and I was hauled backward out of the water, straight upward. The Cruzatch didn’t need to cling to the ceiling or wall, flying easily, and its hold was both painfully tight and so hot it felt like even my very resistant nanoliquid suit was having trouble. Coughing because water had gone up my nose, I kicked upward with my free foot, connecting twice but not seeming to bother it much until I made a nanoliquid spike extend out the bottom of my boot to spear into its arm. It let go, white light spurting.

It was a longish drop back to the water, but that was good because it gave me a chance to twist into a diving position, to orient myself and take a breath, and the velocity to shoot into the nearest outlet and swim as hard and quickly as I could, and fortunately it wasn’t too far and I surfaced in a tall round chamber, only about three metres across, with a clutch of underwater outlets but no other openings I could see.

All that sounds very calm and ordered and deliberate, but my head was nothing but Gah-ahhhhhhh!!! I half died from shock when it grabbed me. The kicking and the stabbing was total panic and my log is full of the coughing sobbing noise I’m making while I’m trying to get free. When I reached the round chamber I was gasping and staring in every direction, looking to see if the Cruzatch was coming after me.

It took a while for me to calm down, but once it was obvious that the Cruzatch wasn’t coming I started taking long, deep breaths and my heart rate gradually settled. I noticed there was a submerged ledge around the edge of the room and swam over to float above it since it was too deep to sit on properly. I just felt so overwhelmed. I’d spent a month alone on Muina, and been terrified more than once, could definitely have died a few times. But nothing had involved me being grabbed and having to fight to get away. And I was alone. No Setari. I was somewhere which might or might not be Muina, with my interface telling me there was no connection.

Deep shit, meet Cassandra.

I didn’t even have the normal gear the Setari go into the Ena with – and if there was one thing I could have done with it was the breather mouthpiece. The water was very cold: not ice, but the kind of thing you wouldn’t want to be in for long without a wet suit, and my breath was coming out with just the faintest hint of mist. As soon I’d calmed down enough, I made my suit impermeable, but it was still unpleasant. So: cold, wet, no food, with at least one Cruzatch roaming around.

I immediately knew that unless the technicians pulled a miracle of analysis out of their asses, no-one was going to be coming through the platform after me. It was obviously one of these everything-works-different-for-Devlin things. Nor could I simply call for help. The Tarens currently had two satellites above Muina: one in an orbit which allows for continual communication between the two settlements, and the other scanning, but my interface, powered just by my body’s electricity, only has a range of a few miles. And obviously I was out of range. Or behind a seal like in Arenrhon.

Having decided that I could absolutely not sit in the round chamber and hope someone came and rescued me, I lifted my right foot out of the water and made the suit draw back from it. There was an impressive set of fingerprints around my ankle – bruised, burned and with a couple of deep, seared scratches. My suit hadn’t been able to hold up to the heat, though it had reformed once the Cruzatch dropped me.

Since I hadn’t prepared for an Ena mission, I didn’t have a medical kit, but the injury wasn’t that bad and the cold was at least numbing the pain. Having settled that, I regrew my boot, then made them both extend out into a reasonable facsimile of flippers. And also grew webbing between my fingers. I love my nanosuit.

As ready as I could be for moving on, I replayed my log, trying to work out which of the four identical inlets was the one I’d come in through. I was on both mission log and my second level monitoring log, so everything I did was thoroughly recorded at least.

The walls were scummy with a green algae, and eventually I matched up the blotches on the first wall I’d seen in my log with one of the walls, which made that wall immediately opposite the one with the inlet I’d come through. I created a nanoliquid sword and scored a one in a circle in the algae above that inlet. Then I opened a drawing application in my interface and started making a map. I couldn’t go back through that inlet, not when I knew that Cruzatch was there. I wouldn’t survive another encounter and wasn’t even sure if I could get out of the water through the broken floor to the platform. So I had to find a second way out.

Picking the wall to the right, I drew a circle with a two in the algae, then began taking deep breaths – both to calm myself and to get a lot of oxygen in my lungs – and set out.

Looking back, I can hardly bear to think about what the next few hours were like. The cistern system was huge: an endless series of inlets and enormous tanks and nothing better to stop and rest on than the too-low ledges around the endless circular junction rooms. There were two saving graces. There didn’t seem to be any animals except for some fish and little turtles. And it glowed, very much like the walls in Arenrhon. Though that worried me immensely, because I suspected it meant I was behind a seal.

The nanosuit saved me from freezing to death, but the longer I went on the colder and slower and heavier I felt. I soon felt like I’d been swimming my entire life, through an endless maze of dimly glowing rooms, and that I would never be able to stop. Once I started to get really tired, I became convinced that I’d made a mistake in my mapping, or that I’d turned myself around swimming across the larger cisterns, but the numbers I was scratching on the walls, no matter how faintly, reassured me whenever I found one which matched my map. The inlet tunnels were hell – long, low passages that I had to swim down into and get through as quickly as possible and once or twice they were extra long and I’d barely make it, especially when my swimming slowed. I would never have made it through some of them without my nano-flippers. One near the end, my lungs were burning and my vision started to fill with wriggling white squiggles and even when I reached the surface and could finally breathe I felt so tired that the idea of going on seemed impossible and I floated on my back until finally I had to go on or just go under.

And then there was a current of water. Warm water.

I stopped in the middle of the cistern I was swimming across, brought alive by the sheer difference of it. A current of warm water. I swam toward it, of course, and followed another inlet and found myself in a small square room with very warm water pouring down from above and – joy – a way up.

I was stupid, too tired and soaked to think of more than standing in that stream of glorious warmth and then climbing straight up. It was almost like a spiral stair made of blocks, with warm water flowing down it, and way too slick for my first effort. I was only halfway up when I slipped, and was rewarded with a bad smack on the side of my head and a bruised side in return for my haste. The second time, I made ridges for traction on the surface of my suit and inched my way up until I found a round metal grate which miraculously could be lifted out of the way so I could oh-so-carefully ease myself through.

It was a bath house, vaguely Roman-style, about twice the size of my bedroom back home. The water was coming from a sunken pool in the middle of the room, which was being made to overflow by a constantly pouring flood coming through an ornately carved hole in the wall. There were big double doors – closed – leading out.

I was so tired I couldn’t stand without shaking, and when I finally managed to do that I went and as quietly as I could moved a green corroded metal thing (maybe a brazier) and wedged it under the handles of the doors. I’m not sure if it would have stopped anything determined to get in, but it would certainly have made a lot of noise and at least given me a chance to try and throw myself back into the cisterns.

Standing in the pool for a few minutes drove away the chill, but after that all I could do was tuck myself into the driest corner of the room, close my eyes and shake. I’d been swimming for over five hours, and was starved and weary beyond imagining. I was too tired to even cry properly, just sat there quivering until I passed out for ten hours straight. No-one came and rescued me, but no Cruzatch showed up either. I had endless nightmares about swimming in the cold and felt battered and starved when I woke up, but at least I could move about without wobbling.

Then I had to decide what to do. Obviously the Cruzatch hadn’t been able to follow me through the water, but exploring would take me away from liquid safety. After all that hellish swimming, I could get halfway down the corridor, run into a horde of Ionoth, and game over.

Sitting in a bathroom starving to death wasn’t that attractive an alternative.

I had a hot bath while I thought, withdrawing my uniform partially and studying my skin, which had wrinkled amazingly where water had been trapped beneath the nanoliquid. Mara had show me how to block my mission log for privacy – it doesn’t stop recording, just means you have to have super-high security clearance to watch the blocked bit – but I don’t trust whoever it is with that clearance to not look simply because I’ve flagged some tiny part of my life as private. And I’d been told not to turn off my mission log while I was technically on mission. Being constantly recorded makes bathroom breaks tremendously embarrassing, but at least my nanosuit helps me be discreet.

As ready as I could be, I nerved myself to go through those doors.

The balcony walkway outside was deserted. And cracked, dropping half a foot to my left. There were no Cruzatch in sight, but there was a clear view outside, and I crossed carefully over, hid behind a Pillar, and stared out.

A mountainside, three mountainsides, with a valley between them covered in white buildings, palatial and grand, with swooping, impossible-looking arches criss-crossing in the air. I could see the sky, but it looked unreal, pearly. Bright enough for daytime, though. I slowly turned my head side to side, keeping behind the Pillar as much as possible in case there was anything out there looking back. My aim was to get a good solid survey into my log and then to look at it in detail somewhere less exposed. I was at the very bottom of the valley, and decided that was a good sign. The cisterns had obviously all been of a level, and I’d climbed up about as much as I’d jumped down from the platform, so I was probably on the right level for that platform. I concentrated on studying the buildings on this lowest level, which were still a large number since the valley had a broad, flat bottom.

There was plenty of damage. Cracks, and rocks and rubble from higher up which had smashed into buildings. Try as I might, I couldn’t decide which direction I’d come from. I’d swum for so long, but had had to keep retracing my steps, and my mapping had gone very skewiff. There were no visible platforms, but I did see that there was a circle of small buildings in the centre of the valley. Pandora’s platform had taken me here, and I knew there were other towns with platforms. Since it seemed to be a transport system more than a communication device (got THAT one wrong, Sight talents) then a central circle of them would make a lot of sense, just as Rana Junction is central in Unara. But to check that out, I had to get to the nearest one without anything seeing me.

It all looked horribly exposed and open. And Cruzatch could fly. As if to underscore that thought, I saw one, drifting slowly up the far mountainside.

Sliding down out of sight, I reviewed my log of the buildings near me and plotted out a route which took advantage of fallen rubble, shadows, and anything that had overhangs and avoided open patches of ground as much as possible, but really it was all going to come down to luck. Anything that happened to be looking in the right direction would see me easily, even when crawling on my hands and knees as I did getting out of that balcony walkway. Black is not a good fashion choice for sneaking among whitestone buildings.

I can review my logs and feel silly for the way I peered around every corner and in every direction each time I moved, but it didn’t seem remotely foolish at the time. I did see Cruzatch twice, and lay still in whatever spot I was in, ready to run madly if spotted. The closer I got, the more I believed I’d make it, and then I started worrying about what if I got to the buildings and there were no platforms, or if I got to a platform and it didn’t take me anywhere.

But when I reached that central circle of buildings, I hit a bigger snag. Other than some fallen rubble and parched bushes, most of the central space was quite clear and flat. There were fifteen buildings, all facing inwards, some with big double doors opened outwards, some with them sealed. Each set of doors sat at the top of a short flight of stairs behind a few not very concealing Pillars holding up porticos, continuing the vaguely Roman theme. And drifting about the steps of the fifth building to the right were a little clutch of Cruzatch.

In some ways that was encouraging. There had been a Cruzatch at the platform I’d come through, and a cluster of them suggested they were guarding the area. After a brief peek and an extensive review of my log, I crept around behind the buildings in the opposite direction, aiming for the building which was six buildings away from the Cruzatch cluster. It had open doors, and its angle was good for concealment as I hauled my way up onto the landing at the top of the steps directly from the ground so that I was sheltered by the open door. Then I peered around the door, hoping they would all conveniently face away from me, but it wasn’t to be, so I bit my lip, chose a moment, and slipped not too quickly and not too slowly out and then inside.

Once through the door I ran. I knew that the platform, if it was there, couldn’t be too far in, since the buildings weren’t that large. And when I had a choice of ramp up or ramp down I took down, since that matched the platforms I’d encountered before.

I don’t think I’ve ever run faster. I’d seen from the corner of my eye the reaction of the Cruzatch. They’d seen me. If I’d chosen the wrong direction I’d…not be writing this now, I guess. As it was, there was a platform, and I ran up on to it, and I wanted to be anywhere but there, and all the lights went out.

I sat down hard, panting. The place I was in was hot, and closed in, and too dark for me to make out any shapes at all immediately. The platform was gritty. After a few gulping breaths, I slid to one side, worried about the Cruzatch being able to come after me, but then the Ddura arrived: a new one making the question noise. Not ecstatic, because I wasn’t Muinan, but pleased and asking for orders. Head pounding instantly, I laughed, and slid over the side of the platform so I couldn’t accidentally teleport anywhere else, and then sat there in the stifling dark and bawled.

Eventually my eyes adjusted enough to see shades of grey, and I worked out that the entrance corridor was almost completely blocked by sand. After I’d recovered from all the running and crying, I wriggled and dug my way out through the gap near the ceiling, and staggered up into too-bright sunlight.

My head felt all the better for getting away from the Ddura, but my heart fell the more I looked about me. After all that water, I’d ended up in one of the few desert areas on the planet. The town was almost completely swallowed by a drifting dune, with only a few roofs poking above the sand, and those were well-covered with a scatter of gold. The Tarens had been analysing years of satellite surveys and locating all the patterned roof ruins. I was sure they would have immediately sent ships to the ruins they hadn’t already stationed relay drones at, to check whether I’d ended up there. This was not one which was going to be visible from the air.

My interface still said no connection, of course.

It was baking hot, and dry, and just climbing up to the top of the tallest tower to get a good look around had me dripping with sweat. I converted my nanosuit to a rather scanty arrangement. You can detach bits and they’ll hold their form, so I kept my boots – reinforcing them for fear of snakes and scorpions – and made the rest into a thin layer in shorts and tank-top form, with the rest of the nanoliquid in a pad on my back.

The village seemed to be on the edge of the desert, but the land which wasn’t covered in sand was a parched wreck for as far as I could see. At one time it must have been a forest of long, thin trees, but I couldn’t see any that looked even remotely alive, and very few that were even upright.

After that I went inside the top room of the tower and sat in the shade, waiting. I read a book, actually – one of the glories of the interface is that I’ll never be short of entertainment while I’m stranded on alien planets, since I’ve downloaded a few decades of TV and books. It was perhaps early afternoon when I’d arrived, and after a couple of hours the extreme heat let up and I went back up on the roof to take another look.

I’d been thinking about what to do in between reading. There was no sign of anything green, of any hint of water. Not even cactus. It wasn’t a place anyone would last long. But trailing off on a cross-country march in this kind of country would be suicidal. And, more to the point–

My ankle had been hurting more, and I reconnected my boots to my suit and withdrew my right one to inspect the bruises and burns and cuts. The entire area around them was swollen and flushed red. It didn’t look up to a cross-country march.

I debated trying to use the platform to go back and get to another platform, but the chances of me avoiding any Cruzatch waiting for me was only marginally higher than a snowflake in my current hell. Instead, I relocated to the closest exposed building to all the dead trees, collected some wood, and made a fire. Sounds nuts, I know, and I didn’t enjoy doing it, but I knew how much energy fire-lighting took from my attempts at Pandora, so knew I needed to start with it. It was also considerably easier than it was at Pandora – bone-dry wood, I guess. It caught within minutes, and I fed it up into a nice smoky bonfire, one which would last for hours. Then, after a little rest, I began hauling long, thin sapling trunks out onto the sand. Even at full size it didn’t look like these trees grew that large, but I focused on the thinner ones because I needed to not exhaust myself lugging serious weight.

I made an arrow, the biggest arrow I could stand to complete, working until sunset. It was about half a metre thick for its entire length and it felt unbearably long. I was a wreck by the time it was done: covered in sweat, sunburned, limping and parched beyond belief. My ankle hurt so much, I had a raging fever, and struggled to keep myself focused until the sun went down. By then I almost couldn’t bring myself to stand up again and limp along the entire length of that huge arrow setting the bushes I’d pinned under the logs alight – getting myself thoroughly smoked along the way.

I almost lost myself on the way back, too, which is quite a feat when you’ve built a huge burning arrow to point out the direction. But I started staggering off into the night and stood in the dark for a long time, not sure where I was. Eventually I managed to reorient on my original bonfire and reached the building there, and after that nothing much makes sense in my memories. It was endless nightmares of swimming and running and being trapped and then escaping and Cruzatch everywhere and constantly feeling cold and burning up at the same time. Ducking out of that Cruzatch’s reach at the Pillar mixed itself in as well, and I actually remember that more than I used to now.

I didn’t need to remember how afraid I was.

And then, running through an endless maze with Cheshire monsters always just behind me, I came face to face with Ruuel. He said "Devlin," and lifted one hand and pressed it – the back of his hand – to my cheek. I can remember that really distinctly, how cool his hand felt, and how he said: "You’re with us. Stop running."

I blinked up at him. I was in a bed and could feel his hand against my cheek, and I said: "Thanks," and my log tells me I really did say that (in English), and sounded so completely astonished that it makes me laugh to listen to it. And he looked amused. Just faintly, barely a shift in the line of his mouth, but that’s in my log too and it’s very hard not to watch it over and over.

I passed out again, but was spared any more dreams, and next time I had anything resembling a coherent thought I was back in the infirmary at Setari headquarters on Tare, and that was two days ago.

And, eh, it’s taken me all day to write this. I’ll pick it up again tomorrow.

Tuesday, May 6

Strayed

From everyone else’s point of view, I walked onto the platform at Pandora and vanished. I have to feel sorry for my two greensuit minders, and Jelan Scal, who’d had to report that I’d gone. I’m also rather glad I wasn’t assigned to any of the Setari squads when this happened, because I guess it would count as a severe assignment failure.

So they started a planet-wide search for me. Like I’d thought, they’d assumed I’d been teleported to another village, or possibly to a sealed place like Arenrhon. It was a massive search effort and I’m glad that they treated my being off by myself as an absolute emergency, even though I’d survived perfectly well alone on Muina for a month. The first thing they did was visit the known pattern-roof villages which hadn’t yet had drones planted at them, and put drones there. Then any known settlement. Putting scan and relay drones all over the planet was something they were intending to do anyway, but they brought forward the schedule on it by a factor of ten. Third and Fourth Squads were sent into the Ena to see if Path Sight through the spaces could locate me, and Second and Eleventh Squad were also sent to Muina, since they also have strong Path Sight talents.

Most of the time of the initial search, I was in the cisterns or asleep in that bathroom. After I woke up, played hide-and-seek across the centre of the city, and made my last-ditch dash for the platform, I’d been missing for nearly seventeen hours. I was just over twenty-four hours gone when I lit up my arrow and passed into fever dreams.

I’m not sure if my arrow would have been spotted if one of the technicians hadn’t noticed that the placement of the pattern-roof villages had its own pattern. It wasn’t a precise one, but it seemed that the villages are pretty evenly-spaced across the planet, so there were particular regions that the Tarens were concentrating on searching. And the satellites were looking specifically for fires, even though it seems there are an awful lot of natural fires. A satellite taking a closer look at a dying fire in one of the search regions found that it was, well, an arrow, and everyone celebrated. Arrows mean the same thing on Tare as they do on Earth.

The nearest ship was sent post-haste to that location: they were over an hour away, and from what I can tell reached me about three hours after sunset.

Eeli sent me a nice get-well email full of highly vivid descriptions of the drama of the search. Since she’s the most powerful of the pathfinders, she’d been very determined to find me herself and it sounds like Taarel had pretty much needed to have her sedated to get her to get some rest during the middle of it all. Third had just returned from a second, very long attempt to locate me through the Ena when the nearest shuttle came within range of my interface and confirmed that I was there. The excitement was dampened by me being non-responsive and in really bad shape – dehydration on top of infection – and then of course they uplifted my log and saw what I’d been doing.

They took me to Pandora until I was out of critical condition, and then back to Tare. My only memory of the first two days was Ruuel telling me to stop running, and once looking up at the lid of a pod. The third day I kept waking for ten or so minutes, then falling back to sleep. Every time I woke, someone different was with me. Mostly First Squad, but Zan, Mori, Glade, even Nils from Second Squad. Lots of hugs, but I was too out of it to hold any real conversation – I’m surprised I managed to write anything in my diary. The medics were doing a lot of work with my leg and it seemed every time I could put two thoughts together they’d come and inject me with something.

The next day was better. My mind was a lot less fuzzy when I was woken by my primary medic, who gave me a follow this light with your eyes test which is becoming very familiar, then took the tubes out of me, and let me eat mush. They checked how I was at sitting up, and helped me to the bathroom and back. I napped again after the medics had cleared me, and next time I woke Maze was with me.

"First Squad have roster to sit with me?" I asked, and he looked over and gave me one of his superb smiles.

"Not that formal, but we are taking turns, yes. You’re more yourself than last time we spoke."

That confused me. "Don’t remember last time." I reviewed my log later and Maze had been sitting with me very early on, and I’d said a few disconnected things to him in English which don’t make sense even to me.

"Doesn’t matter." He gave me another smile, and I could tell he was weighing up what kind of state I was in mentally. "The arrow was a very clever idea."

"I thought that until started building it. Too hot there. Luck not very good in picking which platform escape through."

"Anything that let you get away from the Cruzatch was a good choice," he said, looking away from me briefly. He hates the Cruzatch so much. "Do you feel up to answering some questions? Things the log couldn’t cover."

I shrugged. "Nothing else in my schedule."

"All right. Did you actively try to use the first platform, or feel any sensation of effort when using it?"

"No. Was just standing there hoping the Ddura would be not as loud as usual, and then everyone vanished. Didn’t feel effort at all." I anticipated his next question, adding: "When I got there, I looked into water, then tried to go back. Then Cruzatch turned up and I tried to go back more, and then I ran away. Not sure why didn’t work. When on next platform, didn’t feel any effort, but I was trying to make it work."

He asked me a few other questions – why I’d changed direction toward the bathroom, and how I’d decided where to look for the other platforms – watching me carefully the entire time. Very worried about me.

Eventually I said: "Not going to break down."

His expression was wry. "Do you know, just watching your log was an ordeal? You can’t expect to come through something like that without after effects."

"If you sat through whole thing, will know did plenty breaking down already." But I sighed, and looked away from him. "Going to have more nightmares. And, that probably Lantaren school-city Kalasa, yes? Place most want find."

"Your grammar deteriorates when you’re upset."

He said it with an air of discovery, which did upset me, and I gave him an angry glance.

"We’re not going to let you get into a situation like that again, Caszandra." He touched my cheek and I realised I’d started crying without even noticing, and then of course I cried all over him, which I’d particularly wanted not to do. I ended up feeling thoroughly sick and exhausted, but somehow better.

Not that I believe for a moment that they won’t stand me back up on a platform if they can’t find Kalasa any other way. I know the Setari will be with me, but there’s no way to be sure I won’t end up in the same place, alone.

I’m working on not thinking about that, about being comforted and relaxed, since I’m hoping to be allowed out of infirmary tomorrow and they’re not going to clear me if I act even a little like I’m scared to be alone.

Wednesday, May 7

Annivarming

A week with nothing but medical appointments and some mild training in my schedule. My skin is still peeling thanks to my thorough sunburning, and the infection took a day or two to kill off, but while I’m physically run down (again), and my ankle is covered in this blue spray-on bandage because of the deeper burns there, I wasn’t badly injured this time around. They’ve been feeding me horrible-tasting nanite restorative drinks which seem to have helped a lot, and thankfully Zee was allowed to spring me from the medical facility this morning. I’m so sick of constant monitoring. She also brought me a change of clothes and told me she had a surprise for me.

"What kind of surprise?" I asked. Not, to tell the truth, at all keen on surprises at the moment.

"How is it a surprise if I describe it to you first? Get dressed and you’ll find out all the sooner."

The clothes were new – a pair of black Capri-style pants, sandals, and a really nice silky top with a gorgeous print of a bird with blue and black wings.

"Is this yours?" I asked, pulling open the door of the ensuite. "So pretty."

"It’s yours," Zee said, pleased. "That’s my part of the surprise."

"Thank you," I said, startled and a bit doubtful. "Congratulations on not dying present?"

"Anniversary," she said, flicking my chin lightly for making silly comments. "It’s been a year since you were found on Muina. Well, a year and three days, but we figured you’d prefer to do this when you could get out of bed."

Taren years: a little over four months. "Seems like longer," I said, and hugged her. "Thank you. I promise not to draw on it."

"You’ll be hearing from me if you do." She led me out of the medical facility back to the living quarters. We got off the elevator on the level where First Squad’s quarters were, but instead of heading straight down the corridor, we circled to the other side of the elevator shaft.

"They’ve moved up activating Fourteenth Squad to next week," Zee said. "Since they’ve finished your quarters."

"Different quarters?" On the same level as First Squad. I liked that idea, more than being on a floor where I hadn’t been introduced to anyone.

"It’s the same pattern as ours still, just with even more shielding. We brought your things down."

"Is an anniversary and a housewarming all at same time."

"Housewarming?"

"When move into new house, friends come over and have a party."

"Then, yes, a housewarming."

It was, too, and more than First Squad were waiting for me. Zan was there, and parts of Fourth Squad, Second Squad and Eighth Squad. We barely all fit in my new apartment. And the apartment wasn’t quite the same pattern as everyone else’s, because it had a big round window (not openable or anything) with the wall cut into a smooth cup underneath it: a window seat. And there were rugs, and masses of really lush cushions, which were presents from everyone. Zan gave me a set of actual, physical books by an author she said she thought might be one I would like – that was very cool because books still don’t really seem like mine if there’s not paper involved. And Sonn produced a familiar statue and handed it to me.

"My pippin!" I must have sounded totally astonished, because they laughed. "Thought weren’t allowed to take anything from Muinan sites?"

Sonn looked highly embarrassed, but pleased that I was so pleased. "An exemption was given for this piece," she said. "I gather you’re meant to think of it as a permanent loan rather than a possession."

I was really happy. I would have asked for my pippin ages ago if I thought they were willing to give it to me. And there was not-healthy food and tingly drinks, and everyone was all relaxed and chatty and made me embarrassed by being so nice to me and of course I fell asleep in the middle of it. I woke late in the afternoon in my new bedroom (half-buried in all the big soft cushions) and lay there for a while looking at my pippin statue, which had been set on the bedside table almost as if it was watching over me. I really like having things. So much of Tare is interface-only.

Ruuel wasn’t at my party. He and Halla have been sent off to Unara to be psychic detectives, and the rest of Fourth Squad is killing time giving guidance training to the elder Kalrani, taking them into the spaces. Then they have some belated leave, a whole week to do whatever they want. I guess most will visit their families. I don’t know if Ruuel would have come to the housewarming if he’d been at KOTIS headquarters. I’m pretty sure he’s trying to quietly discourage me by keeping me at a distance. And yet, I’m also almost certain that he was the one who knew that I regretted not bringing my pippin statue, and arranged for me to have it back.

I haven’t been dreaming of him lately, because I’ve been having so many nightmares, but I consistently wake up feeling his absence, knowing that he’s not anywhere near me. Stupid of me, but I’ve stopped fighting it. Wanting Ruuel to be there is just a part of who I am right now. It’s hardly the first time I’ve liked someone who didn’t like me back.

If I had any sense I would have fallen hard for Maze. He’s got to be the nicest guy I’ve ever met, and certainly one of the best looking. He always makes me feel accepted and safe and makes me smile and he coped with me crying all over him really well, and I have to admit that I didn’t mind being squeezed against his chest. But I can’t imagine kissing him.

Well, yeah, I can, but it doesn’t make me feel the same way as I do thinking about Ruuel. Not even close.

When I list reasons for liking Ruuel, the first thing that comes to mind is that he doesn’t hesitate to criticise me, which sounds wrong, but just means he treats me as adult enough and smart enough to be told when to lift my game. And Maze treats me like a younger sister that he really wants to protect.

That’s kind of overstating it. Ruuel also gives a lot of leeway to my psychological aspects, I suspect, and Maze does go all captain on me occasionally. I don’t know. It’s not as if wanting Maze would be a good idea either.

Thursday, May 8

Scar

Very mild training with Mara today, quite similar to what I was originally doing with Zan. It’s almost Tai Chi. Afterwards she went with me to my medical appointment, and talked about the hand mark burned into the skin around my ankle. Taren medical technology is more than equal to healing it without a scar, and there shouldn’t be a trace within a month.

I like chatting to Mara. She probably has to report on our conversations afterwards, but at least she doesn’t act like she’s just waiting for me to get upset. But she also said she’s not going to go so easy on me in combat training from now on, because I obviously can fight when I want to. I think that’s tremendously unfair.

Friday, May 9

In the ducts

I made a huge mistake watching a documentary about how Unara’s air-conditioning works. Such a big city requires really serious, complex and fail-safe systems. Not only to make sure clean air gets in, but so all the fumes and smells and heat don’t get trapped. All that was interesting, and I recognised one of the wind tunnels from a rotation, but then they explained how they keep the ducting clean. To prevent dust clogging it all up, they’ve made these nanotech slime mold things which live in the ducts sort of constantly licking them. That’s bad enough, but it’s not just the ducting which is kept clean that way - it’s all the rest of the Taren’s cities as well. When apartments are unoccupied, the slime crawls out of the air inlets and eats all the dust and grot in the rooms. People call them yannar, which is a Taren slang word for snot, and fits way too well.

I did NOT need to know that. I’m so glad there’s no outlets right above my bed. I’m so sorry I even glanced in the direction of the countless horror movies based on things yannar might try to clean. Taren horror movies are almost all about Ionoth or nanotech.

While not staring obsessively at ducting, I’ve been curled up reading the books Zan bought me. I wasn’t really into the first one at the start, but the main characters grew on me. It’s set on a world called Lithia, and though the people are ex-Muinan and psychic, they’re dealing with the problems of their new world, not Ionoth, and there’s a nice dose of magic and mysticism mixed in with the science. I don’t know if she was thinking of my psychological aspects or not, but Zan hit on a gift which really made me feel settled, and less keyed up. Even though it’s in a different language, holding a book is such a familiar, comfortable thing for me. Like crying all over Maze, I guess it was something I needed.

It didn’t take Ghost long to find my new apartment. She seems to like it, especially the window seat, and buried herself in the cushions, keeping a watch on the storms. It’s still night on Tare, but there’s been some spectacular lightning. Even though all the sound is blocked out so I can’t hear the thunder, I love having a window.

Saturday, May 10

Stressing

Horrible nightmares last night. Of drowning, and then being so thirsty. I gave up in the middle of my sleep shift and watched the first few hours of dawn and wished Ghost hadn’t gone off somewhere. Training again with Mara today, and more medical exams than seems really necessary. They’ve moved on to brain scans, and there’s yet another greysuit trying to debrief me. Really, if they want to check how I’m coping mentally they’d be far better off having Ista Tremmar chat with me, instead of some woman I’ve never met before.

The more nightmares I have, the less I want to talk.

Sunday, May 11

Flinch

Today I had lunch with Zan and the only other girl in her squad, Dess Charn. Just a chat about Arenrhon and how I survived my visit to Kalasa. Dess, who doesn’t like swimming at all, was very struck by my flippers and webbed fingers and doesn’t see why they should do swimming training without using such a useful modification.

Zan listened to her thoughtfully, and said they would include the flippers in their next underwater manoeuvres training, but was absolute about the need to increase speed with surface, non-enhanced swimming. Zan’s very good at giving orders. She took my afternoon training session instead of Mara, too, which felt very strange to me. It’s been so long since those early sessions with Zan, and I found myself occasionally glancing up at the observation window half-expecting to see people looking down at me.

I’m a lot improved physically. Not halfway fit or anything, but I’m well past getting shaky just because I’m walking. Zan said as I left that she’d be glad to go swimming with me next time I went, and can’t know how what she said struck me. I don’t want to go swimming. The idea gets me all upset.

And that bothers me a lot.

Monday, May 12

Desensitisation

After this morning’s medical tests, today was a free day for me, since First and Twelfth were both on rotation. I brooded in my room for a while, watching it raining outside, the ocean pounding thunderously, then booked the pool and went swimming.

I took a breather with me, but at the start just swam around the surface. It was a long time before I could make myself use the breather and slowly swim down through the obstacle course to the bottom of the pool. It wasn’t easy: I had to constantly fight down this urge to kick frantically for the surface. But I’d gotten angry at myself for being like that, and stuck it out until I was all the way at the bottom and then I lay there for a little while taking deep breaths and telling myself I was okay with swimming now.

"Come to the surface."

A text from Ruuel, curt as usual, and unexpected enough that I didn’t move immediately. With a sense that I was about to get a lecture, I started back up, only just remembering to stop at the marked spots where you have to wait to avoid getting decompression sickness, though I’m not sure if the pool is so deep you would really get the bends from it. It takes over five minutes if you stop at these points for as long as it says, which gave me plenty of time to make guesses on what he was going to say, wonder why I had to come to the surface for him to say it, and to school myself not to just look totally happy that I got to see him.

I could see a blurry black shape, standing on one side the pool, but remembering how at a disadvantage I’d felt looking up at Kajal, I surfaced a few metres back from the edge only to find he’d dropped to his heels to avoid towering over me. He studied me as I moved a little closer, eyes their usual half open flatness, then said: "Why do this when the squads you’re working with are in the Ena?"

I don’t know whether it’s his Sights or simply being very smart which allows him to jump ahead like that. He didn’t need to be told what I was trying to do, and so went straight to the things which were less obvious.

"Because I feel safer when Setari are with me," I said. "Would defeat purpose."

"So would fainting at the bottom of the practice pool."

That annoyed me: it’s not as if I’d have gone in the pool if I was feeling tired or sick. "Haven’t fainted in days," I said. "Fourth Squad not on leave any more?"

"Another five days."

"Just like wearing uniform?"

He glanced down, well aware that I was moving ground to avoid more lecture, but only said: "This is the middle of my sleep shift."

He meant he was wearing the uniform because it was quick to put on, and he’d been woken up and sent down here to get me to stop putting myself at risk. I felt my face go really hot.

"Sorry."

Ruuel shook his head, then stood. "Confine yourself to the upper five delar," he said, and walked off.

He was out of the room before I remembered I wanted to thank him for my pippin. I could have just sent him a message through the interface, but it wasn’t the same, so I put my breather back in and dropped back under water and spent about ten minutes being massively upset.

It wasn’t a particularly rational response. After all, instead of telling me I had to have people with me when I went swimming, or telling me off for doing things which someone had obviously considered dangerous, he’d just put a sensible limit on it and left me to it. But I felt bad that he’d been woken up on his holiday because I need babysitting.

And because I do need babysitting right now.

After a while it occurred to me that being upset had distracted me from being underwater. I’m still not keen to go swimming, but I didn’t think I was going to achieve anything more hanging around in the pool. Plus I felt really exhausted by then, so I went back to my room and fell asleep. And had horrible nightmares about being chased.

And now I’m wondering if I’ve stopped being on second level monitoring and have been switched to third level: someone watching me all the time. What, after all, had made them send Ruuel to get me to stop experimenting if they hadn’t been watching me do it? And that’s upset me even worse than before and I have to think of some way to calm myself down before Maze inevitably shows up and wants to talk over yesterday. I’m lucky I was asleep when First Squad finished their rotation.

Tuesday, May 13

Facing facts

About five minutes after he woke up, Maze sent me a chat message asking if he could come talk to me. I said Sure, but as soon as he walked in, I asked: "Have I been put on a higher level of monitoring?"

"You’re on a live vitals monitor," he said, not missing a step as he came to sit with me in my window seat. "And locations monitor. A greatly elevated heartbeat at the bottom of the training pool was guaranteed to gain attention."

"Extra monitoring permanent?"

"Few things are permanent." He sighed, looking me over. "I know it chafes you, Caszandra. And that you’re used to a great deal more independence than we’re likely to ever permit you. But even if you were fully recovered, I’d prefer you not try such experiments alone."

"Needed to do that alone, in case have to do it alone," I said, stubbornly. "Agree probably shouldn’t have gone so far down."

I could see him decide not to argue the point, instead shifting to the reason I had to think about it at all. "The aerial search for Kalasa has only just begun," he said. "Are you so certain we’ll fail to find it?"

"Fairly sure," I said. "Would rather not pretend it’s not strong possibility that will have to get back on platform. Easier to prepare for worst and then be glad if doesn’t happen."

He had to concede that was common sense, and we talked a while about the likely approach if they can’t find Kalasa any way except through me. Finding Kalasa as quickly as possible is one of the highest priority tasks on Muina, because if there’s one place that’s sure to have information about the platforms and Pillars, it’s the place the platforms all lead.

If they do decide to try and use the platforms to get there, they’ll first see if it’s another level of security clearance and whether it’s possible for me to give the Setari clearance. If that doesn’t work, it will get a good deal more chancy, and most likely they’d give me some kind of weapon (and food and water and a breather and a really powerful location booster), and then see if I can bring through a Setari in physical contact with me.

They’re not keen on that option. But Maze admitted that it was possible I would be asked to do it. We went off to breakfast, and then he had to go do captainly things and I had medical appointments and later training with Mara. I’m feeling better than yesterday. Going into the water was a hurdle I needed to get through, and though I think it’ll be a while before I go swimming for fun, I at least know I can handle it.

I’m coping.

Wednesday, May 14

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

I think last Sunday was Mother’s Day. I was so caught up I forgot all about it. So happy belated Mother’s Day, Mum. I probably would have bought you another flowering plant, since I know you like them better than cut flowers. Francesca, maybe, since the last one met a sudden death by Jules.

I’ve thrown myself back into my school work. For one thing, passing certain tests are a requirement for adulthood here. It’s a combination of age and ability. They’re not particularly difficult tests, apparently, but I’d hate to be permanently considered to require special care.

And I don’t see why I have to have medical tests every single damn day. First Squad are making sure I eat most of my meals with at least one of them, which strikes me as a sufficient stray health check.

Thursday, May 15

Traces of me

They chose Fourteenth Squad today. Alaz was made their Ena Manipulation specialist. Fourteenth is another exploration specialty squad, and I’ve been booked in to test with them tomorrow.

Their Captain is called Kin Lara, and I feel a little weird that he has my old room. Especially since he has four Sights (not Sight Sight) and who knows what he’ll pick up sleeping in my old bed? I’m glad I haven’t really been using that room for a while.

I hope it’s a squad I get along with. At least there’s someone I know already. Alaz wasn’t exactly friendly with me during the Rana Junction expedition, but at least she’ll be familiar.

Friday, May 16

Fourteenth Squad

A good session today.

We met in the usual test room. I went a little earlier than usual to meet up with Nils Sayate from Second, who is trying to teach me how to make illusions. Lessons are my present from him: he gave me a choice between foot rubs and lessons and I chose the lessons because I don’t really trust Nils to give me foot rubs. I mean, I think he’s in love with Zee, but sometimes I’m not altogether sure he’s just teasing when he flirts with me.

Occasionally the only thing which keeps me from flirting back is that I’m pretty sure Zee is in love with him too. But I do think about it sometimes. In a way I think a couple of nights with Nils would be good for me. It would certainly be educational.

He’s very professional about the lessons though, which have all been visualisation exercises so far. He’s got a great voice for talking through what you’re supposed to be visualising: smoky and evocative. I completely failed to make any illusions, possibly because I’m far less professional and kept thinking about foot rubs. But Nils told me that Illusion-casting is one of the hardest talents to master and that I shouldn’t give up, and he’d try talking me through every few weeks. I’m still not entirely convinced I have any kind of Illusion talent, but I don’t mind trying. It would be nice to be able to show the things I’m talking about when trying to describe Earth.

Fourteenth Squad arrived in a group, and came across to introduce themselves. Their captain, Lara, was so very relaxed he was almost unconscious, and I really liked the sleepy smile he gave me. He totally didn’t act like someone who’d only been a captain for a single day, taking his squad through the tests as if he’d been doing the same thing every day for the last year.

It was interesting working with a squad where everyone was my age or a year younger. Except for Lara, they were still tremendously correct and upright during the session, but I felt less like a pet or mascot and more of a peer. I liked them. I hope all my future test sessions are so comfortable.

Saturday, May 17

Slowly shifting back to normal

Mara stepped up my training today, and also took me on a tour of the gym facilities the Setari use. I knew they had to be doing weights training somewhere. She explained how to use the machines, but doesn’t want me to use the place without someone with me. No fear of that: although there were only a couple of people from Tenth Squad there today, the chances of me ending up alone in a gym with Fifth or Seventh Squad are too great for me to ever risk using the place without minders.

I’m due to test with Thirteenth Squad tomorrow, and my next week has been mapped out with testing with the few squads I haven’t worked with. Mara says they still don’t know if I’ll be put back on rotations or not, and surprised me by asking my preferences. I usually don’t get to have any input on these decisions, so suspect this is more catering to my psychological aspects. Since my excursion to Kalasa, everyone’s pretty much decided I’m a delicate little flower on the verge of collapse. Even Mara is more careful with me than she used to be. That’s what I get for crying on a mission log.

I said I’d prefer to go on rotation so long as it was with First Squad. It’s a more positive thing to do than fretting about nightmares, and I worry about them. They’re looking tired.

Sunday, May 18

Fifteen minutes plus

A little after "my" midnight, just as I was settling into bed for the night, Mori sent me a text channel request: "You may be interested in this."

Surprised, I opened the channel to find Mori, Glade, and Par, as well as Seeli Henaz from Eighth Squad in channel. I don’t know Henaz well, but I think she’s Mori’s particular friend and maybe Glade’s almost-girlfriend.

"Which?"

"This is an extra-length special episode," Mori said, popping up a link in channel, and I opened it to find the middle of the opening credits of The Hidden War.

"Still years behind on show," I said, though I was beginning to suspect why Mori had felt the need to call me.

"From the episode preview, we think they’ve based a character on you," Glade said.

"Inevitable, I guess," I said, making sure to sound totally unfussed about it. And I wasn’t, really. It’s nothing that wouldn’t happen on Earth. "Kind of used to people making up things about me."

"You can tell us what they’ve gotten wrong," Mori said, sounding pleased. "We comment in text, and chat during the breaks."

I thought it sweet of her to have made sure I knew about it, so stuck around even though it would mess up my sleep schedule again. Taren entertainments have two release broadcasts in different shifts which have commercials in them but are free, and then the show is available to watch for a fee (like twenty cents), without commercials. It was very common for people to watch the release in channel groups, though not necessarily to make fun of the show like Mori and Glade. I’m not sure if Par watches it because he likes it or just to keep Glade company. It’s one of the most successful entertainments on Tare at the moment, and I’ve been enjoying watching it, though I’d taken a break from it because it was full of the main character being picked on by other Kalrani competing to be selected for the next Setari squad, and I kept getting stuck on the thought of people bullying Zan. I can only guess what Zan would think of me thinking about her that way. It’s not like she’s not incredibly deadly and competent in her own right.

The special episode started with a girl walking out of nowhere onto a hill and being all astonished, staring about her. She was tallish, with brown hair, but that’s where the resemblance to me ended. This girl was much, much (much) better looking. Pointed chin, huge, dark eyes, gorgeous bones and skin and figure: a kind of Russian look, which I think is very rare here. I was totally distracted by the way she was dressed, with a vaguely correct school blazer and a white shirt, but no tie, and a micro-miniskirt with long dark blue socks that came up to mid-thigh. Seems The Hidden War isn’t above a little fan service.

"Would get sent home if turned up to school wearing skirt that short," was all I said in channel, and moved on to wondering if they’d gone to Muina to film this, since it was quite obviously hills in the same region as Pandora, except just starting to turn colours – wherever they’d sourced the images from, it wasn’t in the late Autumn of the last few weeks. I could hardly believe they’d managed to produce a whole program about me in the short time since news of my existence was released.

Other than the silly outfit, I didn’t mind the way they were portraying me. Upset, but not totally hysterical, calling out in a nonsense-language and looking bewildered and sitting down for a while before growing resolute. She picked a direction and started out that way, scoring marks on the trees with a rock, which I hadn’t thought to do. I was impressed with the relative correctness of her school bag and how the first problem she ran into was blisters, and they even had her doing an inventory of what she was carrying, and writing in a diary as the sun set.

Her writing was nonsense characters which looked like shorthand to me, with subtitles translating fragments such as: "Where is this place? I’m sure this isn’t Urth. All I can do is keep pushing on until I find civilisation – but what if I’m the only one here?"

There was a commercial break after that, and we chatted in-channel about how the actress was good at looking scared and lost and determined, and the things I’d done which they obviously hadn’t thought about (mainly checking my mobile, and finding out that I had not nearly enough tissues to serve as toilet paper on an alien world – though I didn’t bother to mention that to everyone), and we made guesses at the mechanics of how they’d created the program, since they were all sure that no on-location filming had or would be permitted for some time. Glade was full of explanations of how they’d have done the computer simulations based on the officially released surveys.

After that fake-me’s journey was fast forwarded, cutting several days into a series of shots of worse blisters, and trying random berries and nuts, attempting to weave a basket and a mat and make a hat, and avoiding animals, then staring at the moon with its very un-Earth-like hole. I started to be less impressed about the accuracy of the show around the time the actress climbed up a tree to avoid a pack of small yellow dogs, and they went to the next break after a longer scene where she was lying under a mat of woven reeds, the screen filled with darkness and all you could hear was something walking toward her, the crackle of the reed mat bending under the unseen thing’s weight, and its breathing as it stood above her and she tried to hold her own breath and not to cry. Extremely effective.

I couldn’t even talk after that. Not for the bad memories but because I’d told only Isten Notra about the yellow dogs, and only Lohn and Mara about that horrible night when I nearly died from the sheer anticipation of being eaten. That was the same time I’d talked to them about how upset it would make me to be cloned. Mori and Glade were being impressed with the show, but when they started to chat I said in text: "That really happen. Only told that two people. Lots of this happen."

There was a brief pause, then Glade said: "Are you in quarters, Caszandra?" He wouldn’t know because Fourth’s still on leave and most people don’t have the rights to do pinpoint location tracking.

"Yes. Supposed to be asleep. How many people can access complete KOTIS file about me?"

"I’ll ask," he said. "Don’t leave the channel, all right?"

The ad break had only just finished when Ketzaren – the only member of First Squad not asleep – sent me a text saying: "Can I come in?"

I released the door and made the lights go from black to dim. I didn’t feel like getting out of bed – I felt sick and awful and hot – but didn’t want to wait there like a kid clutching a teddy bear, so I met her at the door and she took one look at me and made me sit on the couch. She was dressed in a shirt and shorts, had obviously been in bed herself, and she sat down with me and squeezed me hard as Mori brought her into the channel we were sharing.

"I think mainly I’m angry they didn’t warn me they were going to release so much," I said out loud, but that was a mistake because my voice sounded nearly as rawly betrayed as I felt and I missed a lot of the next bit because I was concentrating on not crying. It was about finding Pandora, and searching out my tower and setting up a home there. I began to calm down, for while it was still accurate, except for a dramatic Ming Cat stalking which hadn’t happened at all, there wasn’t anything in it which I hadn’t described to several different people. Ketzaren rubbed my shoulder and watched, and when the next ad break came, just after the first moonfall, she said: "Mara’s bringing us something hot to drink."

"Didn’t want to wake people up," I said, unhappily. Part of the reason I was upset by then was because I’d gotten upset and caused a fuss, instead of just asking Maze about it the next day. "Feel like an overwrought baby lately, always having dramas."

"Stop holding yourself to such an impossibly high standard," Ketzaren said. "This whole year has been an extreme for you. You’ve adapted better than we could have hoped, but being lost again, hurt and alone and in such danger – you’re not going to just get over it. Why are you expecting that of yourself? Are you still having nightmares?"

"Not as many."

"But too many, right? And now this. Believe me, this goes well beyond the limits of what’s been officially released about you. And you end up feeling violated, feeling you can’t even trust us, to talk to us and not have what you say repeated. And yet we’re the only people you know enough to want to talk about it, and then you feel like you’re burdening us by being upset."

"That transparent?"

"You’re a straightforward person." She tugged at a wisp of my hair. "Myself, I’d be furious and want to hit things, but you don’t seem to respond that way. Are you sure you want to watch the rest of this?"

"Will never get to sleep without knowing what else is in there." But then there would be next episode, and next episode. I realised I was shaking, literally sitting there shaking because of a TV show, and there was no way to hide that from Ketzaren.

The show played up the drama of me slowly getting sicker while trying to do practical survivor stuff. Mara arrived with some mugs of a hot drink which bore a vague resemblance to tea. Lots of sweetener. She and Ketzaren squeezed me between them even though they’re not supposed to both touch me at once and we watched the improbably pretty girl decline into a exhausted and ill but possibly even prettier girl, and apparently have some prophetic visions of Pillars and stone gates during the second moonfall. Mara and Ketzaren felt me react to that, too, but there was no way I was explaining.

"It amazes me that she’s still wearing those socks," I said into the shared channel during the next ad break, and my voice was almost normal. "The number of useful things I could have done with thigh-length socks, and all she does is wear them."

"Useful things like what?" Mori asked, sounding greatly relieved that I’d stopped having a breakdown.

"Could probably have made a sling – a way to throw rocks and things really hard and fast as a weapon. Or used one as a bag. Make good straps, too. She didn’t even double them over as padding when she had blisters."

"Part of the image they’re marketing," Glade said. "I expect the entire outfit can be purchased as cross-promotion."

The idea of thousands of Taren teenagers running around in sexed-up versions of my school uniform was pretty mind boggling. I shook my head, hoping that if ever Tare established communication with Earth they’ll have lost all copies of this program before then.

It was hard to watch the next part. I’ve always been scared by the idea of madness, and those days after the second moonfall, when I grew increasingly convinced that there were things lurking around every corner, were still a confusing and unpleasant haze. I was very weak and felt like my mind was falling apart along with my body. I’d skimmed over this when talking to Isten Notra, but had obviously revealed more than I’d wanted. And then the Ddura, which I realise must have saved my life from the Ionoth trying to reach me, or whatever was going on before it arrived. Then a hazy still morning, and the scene was shown through the actress' eyes – two black-clad figures standing in her refuge looking down at her. They hadn’t exactly matched Sonn and Ruuel in looks, but there was a definite similarity, particularly in the half-lidded eyes of the guy.

Then the viewpoint drew back, showed the three from the side, and switched to Sonn’s viewpoint, looking down at a sick and unkempt (but still very beautiful) girl who was gazing up at them, fear and shock turning to joy on her face.

"Filthy creature," commented the fake Ruuel.

My jaw dropped. I could imagine Par, Mori and Glade’s reactions.

"What do we do with her?" asked the fake Sonn (their names, according to the Setari mission overlay, were Lastier and Chane). "We don’t have the time to waste on a stray."

"Put her down by the lake for collection. She’s not our problem."

He went up the stairs to the roof, leaving Chane to herd a frightened kittenish girl downstairs, making a big point of avoiding any attempt by the filthy creature to touch her. The show finished with a scene of the girl sitting abandoned on a rock by the shore, clutching school bag to chest and staring at the ship out on the lake.

After Lastier made his nasty comment, Mori had said hastily in text: "Ruuel didn’t say anything like that, Caszandra," and I’d replied: "I know – I read mission report." When the closing credits began to run, she and Glade exploded, outraged. Even Par said something half-audible about it being so wrong. All of Fourth are totally loyal to Ruuel, and they couldn’t stand him being shown in a false light.

"Poor Sonn," I said, when they paused for breath. "Ruuel not likely even blink at this, but Sonn will be really hurt. If you talk to her, make sure she knows I didn’t think they were being nasty to me: they just looked like they were busy and hadn’t expected to find me." When I’d watched the mission report, I’d realised it was more they hadn’t expected to find me alive, after tracking my movements to the tower.

"Fourth is an unusual squad to have cast in the role of villain," Henaz said, sounding like she was trying very hard not to laugh. "But this is the most obvious and deliberate reflection of a real squad I’ve ever seen."

"And portions of that were an exact copy of the scene recorded on the mission log," Ketzaren added. "Which is the issue at hand. You’ll hear the results of the investigation presently. Be assured that there is no suggestion that Fourth Squad’s conduct was anything but correct."

"And on that note, we’re well into our sleep shift," Mara put in. "Good night to you all." She dropped out of the channel, and after adding "Thanks for letting me know," I followed suit.

"Funny how two extra words can change tone of entire scene," I said. "That’s almost exactly how Fourth did deal with me, but by adding two words it made it so they were horrible instead of just really busy."

"You’ve recovered a little," Ketzaren said, smiling. "No longer so shaken up?"

I shrugged and ducked my head. "It was the surprise, seeing that without any warning. I was expecting the story to be all wrong and totally made up."

"Instead of including something frightening you’d only told Lohn and I?" Mara asked, voice tight. "I’m so angry about this I could scream. Maze has been looking for ways to increase your sense of security and privacy, not destroy it. We did log that conversation, Caszandra, and Maze attached it to an evaluation report, but even Lohn and I can’t look at the report. Outside the higher hierarchy, only captains can look at evaluation information, and then only on their own squad members, which in your case means three captains. None of it should be forming the basis of public broadcasts. I really don’t know what’s going on, but both you and Fourth Squad have every reason to be furious."

"Too tired now to get angry," I said. "Sorry to have made fuss in middle of sleep cycle."

"You think it would be better to work yourself into a state alone?" Ketzaren asked. "Part of being in a squad is supporting each other."

"I’ll be sitting with you for a few hours," Mara added. "No arguments. Besides, it means Ketz gets to be the one to wake Maze and tell him there’s been a security breach. It’ll be easier on all of us if someone’s with you."

I didn’t really have the energy to argue, to try to convince Mara that I was fine, that I was coping. I’m starting to have to admit, at least to myself, that because of Kalasa, or just everything which has happened since my last day of exams, I’m not nearly okay.

I’m so glad Mara stayed, because I had the most horrendous nightmares, and it seemed like I could escape from them because she would hold my hand when I started thrashing around. Some time toward the end, Zee replaced Mara, and I woke up from this really awful dream – of being in a Roman colosseum with thousands of people watching me being eaten by lions – to find Zee sitting on the edge of my bed, a steadying hand on my arm.

She watched me blink at her, then felt my forehead. "Medical for you today, I think," she said, "and don’t pull that face. I don’t know if it’s the fever causing the nightmares, or the nightmares causing the fever, but your temperature’s definitely elevated. Did you dream so violently on Earth?"

"No. I used to have bad dreams when I was young, but nothing like this. Not even on Muina, though I did have nightmares. Started on really bad dreams after turning off Pillar – kind of remembering what happened, the bits I couldn’t remember when I was awake. It had gone away, though–" I paused, flushing.

"Though should I talk about it in case it ends up turned into entertainment?"

More that I’d started having very intense dreams about Ruuel, which had made up for the nightmares, but this wasn’t something I was going to admit, security breach or not. I shrugged and said: "I think I generally dream more intensely now. Or remember them better when I wake up. Did investigation into program get anywhere?"

"I’ve heard rumours, but there’s nothing official. Get dressed and we’ll have breakfast."

We ate in Zee’s quarters. Maze came and joined us to talk over the program and how I felt about it. I said pretty bluntly that it made me want to not tell anyone anything, but that I knew that was an overreaction. I totally refused to talk to a psychologist though. I have nightmares because scary monsters were chasing me. If I have to talk about that, I’d far rather talk to Zee or Mara, not some random stranger.

Maze told me I shouldn’t watch The Hidden War any more but I said there was no way I was going to miss Fourth Squad playing villains, and couldn’t wait for the episode where the Nuran shows up and tries to save me. He knew I was teasing him, but I think I will watch it anyway, just not with other people watching with me. I get the feeling Maze has a good idea of how the people who make the program got the information, but he’s not going to tell me anything until it’s official. I hope he’s right about nothing more leaking out.

Right now I’m stuck on a sense-bed in medical, while they run more scans on me. They want me to go to sleep later so they can scan me while I’m having a dream, but I’m seriously not keen on that because what if I dream about Ruuel?

I hope I was right about him not caring about the show. He’ll probably be annoyed because it will upset his squad, but would surely shrug off anything else. I’m so glad I’d watched the mission log, and knew immediately that he hadn’t said that. I find it difficult to imagine him actually saying something gratuitous and insulting, whether he thought it or not.

I was really grubby, after all. Just thinking about it makes me want a hot bath and lots of scented soap.

Monday, May 19

Careful what you say

Nothing useful from all the scanning and testing. My temperature went down, and though I was tired I found it hard to fall asleep. They eventually gave me a mild sedative and I’m not sure I dreamed at all. They had me come back today as well and this time I could fall asleep naturally. My sleep schedule is completely messed up. I dreamed about being lost in a shopping mall, I think – it was a bit of a jumble. They’ve cleared me to go back to what I was doing, anyway, and my scheduled testing with the remaining squads is on again (though Thirteenth has been pushed to the end instead of the beginning).

I think the sleep tests were skewed for failure. First because I didn’t want to have any intense dreams and was consciously or subconsciously trying not to. And second, I wasn’t really upset any more, and I mostly have the worst nightmares when I’m upset or stressed out. That’s the reason people usually have bad nightmares, anyway.

Mori came and visited me this afternoon – Fourth Squad is back on duty tomorrow. She’s still really pissed off, and was worked up about an interview with the actor who is playing fake Ruuel. In the interview he talked about the incredible schedule they’d been keeping to produce the show so quickly, and how much he enjoyed the role, and that one of the reasons The Hidden War was so powerful was because it refused to show the Setari as bland, one-sided heroes without any faults. That even out-and-out villains can risk their lives protecting others.

I thought this terribly funny, but tried not to show it too much because Mori was genuinely upset on Ruuel’s behalf. I’m willing to bet Ruuel’s the least upset in Fourth right now. The main reason the squad’s so worked up is that it’s so similar to what happened, and certainly within KOTIS everyone knows it was Fourth Squad who found me. Plus, the kittenish actress is playing Caszandra Devlin. In the interview with her she said that the producers had decided it would be foolish to rename such a major historical figure. And The Hidden War has portrayed the people who found me as being severe pricks. I can only hope that they’re just playing up villain aspects for drama, and will tone it down later. After all, Ruuel did save my life when I wandered off into the spaces.

After Mori left, Maze and Zee dropped in to tell me the results of the investigation. Apparently one of KOTIS' publicity officers, a woman named Intena Jun, decided to use me to build her career. Part of her duties was the release of information about the Setari and lately about me and the developments on Muina. That includes giving technical advice to shows like The Hidden War when they ask for it. And it seems she fancies herself a bit of a scriptwriter, and just happened to have resigned the day before the episode featuring me was broadcast – and then bobs up in a press release as a former KOTIS member joining the scriptwriting team.

That was a far from ideal situation, but still shouldn’t have meant that my conversation with Lohn and Mara ended up forming the basis of anything: you can’t join KOTIS without signing an inch-thick nondisclosure agreement, and publicity officers certainly don’t have access to anyone’s evaluation file, or even the mission reports. But it turns out that Jun is using the completely transparent excuse that it’s all fiction based around the publicly-released information about me, and that her family in the past has been known to produce minor Sight Sight talents, and she was simply intuiting very well. Of course, since the press release there’s been tons of rumours about just how much of the script is fiction, which is exactly what the producers wanted. The episode was a wild success, and the discussion groups are filled with anticipation of a season they hope will reveal details of real Setari.

The episode was a critical success, too, with lots of admiration for the actress (a newcomer named Se-Ahn Surat, who did after all carry a kasse-long program as the nearly sole character, practically never speaking). Almost all the reviews rave about the night scene, the way something as simple as an animal breathing brought home the peril and horror this valiant child suffered through.

It took KOTIS an extra day to figure out how Jun had accessed the files. Maze stayed vague about the details, but it boiled down to some very senior and high-up bluesuit who did have access to just about everything, also having an inappropriate relationship with Jun. So lots of nasty consequences for him for the breach of security, and less clear-cut consequences for Jun. Although the legal system here isn’t as insane as Earth’s, KOTIS is merely a body of government, not all-powerful. They can, and probably will, prosecute and try and get Jun punished (fines, loss of all but the most basic interface function, or possibly confinement). Tare doesn’t have capital punishment, but in extreme circumstances they can do particularly awful things to you using the interface. Stealing my file isn’t nearly extreme enough a circumstance.

It sounds like Jun is ambitious enough to consider a few years of freedom or privileges or even citizenship a price worth paying for highly lucrative employment.

"Our ability to control media access to KOTIS and the Setari is waning," Maze said, rubbing his eyes. He’s looking tired again. "Previously, we succeeded in retaining our anonymity because to a degree outside KOTIS we were all the same. A uniform and a talent set: there was no need to release anything about our personal lives. Which means programs such as this one would be freely provided with details of how we balance squad make up, the limitations of talent sets, and information about the rotations and the Ionoth, but names and our lives off-duty and the minutiae of actual missions: we simply allowed nothing at all out, so into these situations they would place invented characters. Even the squads in these fictions are named for colours, so that a character in Green Squad cannot be taken as a member of Fourth, or Eighth or Tenth. Occasionally someone’s family would grant interviews, and most of our names are in public domain, but they cannot match the names to squads, faces or events. Only in death are we known." He glanced at me, nothing on his face showing whether he was thinking about his wife.

"But now, because of the opening of Muina, the ground is shifting," Zee added. "Our efforts in the Ena lessened deaths on Tare, but we had made no substantial progress toward a solution. There were no critical events to attach to us as individuals. Until Fourth Squad found you. Something so significant that this show’s producers chose to upset the established rules, obtain actual information about the squad, and introduce characters based on Fourth. Worse, a distortion of Fourth. Even if they used already-established characters, those characters would become associated with the squads who have worked with you."

"If they follow my story very close, that means Zan would be next." I didn’t like that idea at all.

"The classification of information about Muina is also being called into question," Maze said. "The discovery of Arenrhon, your time in Kalasa – all of this is known to hundreds, thousands. Details are starting to leak, many are asking what right KOTIS, the government, what right anyone has to classify matters which are important to all descendants of Muina." He sighed and shrugged. "It’s difficult to justify keeping secret the existence of Arenrhon purely because it might upset people. These things cannot be hidden forever."

"Which is a long-winded way of saying that KOTIS may not be able to quash these programs," Zee added. "At most delay them, but however the information was obtained, your personal journey can’t be argued to be a military secret."

"And through me, parts of Setari become known too." I turned over the possibilities, and felt a little ill. "Is squads I don’t want to work with in file?"

"Selkie kept that entirely out of the reports," Maze said. "It will go no further than himself, Ruuel and us. Fifth and Seventh are very effective squads who need to learn to control their egos. We won’t achieve that by letting anyone know just why it is you will never again be assigned to them. If we handle them properly, they should come to understand and regret that of their own accord."

I relaxed, then sighed. "Can still be a mess, though, yes? Because they mix extra drama in with true, and Setari won’t always know which has come from my file." I paused, eyes widening. "Is lab rat explanation in file?" I tugged at my shirt, one of the drawn-on ones. I make a point of wearing them to my test sessions in the medical section.

I saw from Maze’s expression that it was, and couldn’t help it, bursting out laughing. "Did you put in bit where Ruuel says calling myself experimental animal was right?" I asked, trying (maybe not very hard) to hold back my grin. "Set himself up for this. Oh, wish I dared tease him about it."

Maze and Zee told me that I should remember that Fourth Squad wouldn’t find it nearly as funny, but I think they were mainly glad that I was able to laugh. Zee offered to sit with me tonight while I sleep, but I think I’m past the worst of it. I seem to have these bad dreams after a shock or surprise. Must figure out how to trigger the good dreams instead.

Given the chance, I would love to give that publicity woman a good slapping. Maybe I should tell Taarel that I think it would help me overcome my reluctance to hit people.

Tuesday, May 20

Ticking off the rest

I’ve been scheduled to test with Sixth, Tenth, Eleventh, Twelfth and Thirteenth Squads, and that will finish me for general squad testing until they form some new ones. Today was Twelfth Squad, which was nice. Lenton was carefully correct while a relaxed Zan chatted with me before starting the session log. Afterwards, we all went to lunch, and talked about Kalasa. Zan kept a watchful eye on me, ready to stop if I looked distressed, and when a couple of them moved on to The Hidden War, particularly how hilarious it was that Fourth Squad were evil, she quashed that conversation with a word.

I think active service has let Twelfth settle down and accept Zan more. I still have no idea why they were so hostile to her, but don’t like to ask.

Fourth Squad’s back on duty, and I spent all day being a little extra attentive in case I could catch a glimpse of Ruuel. And was so annoyed with myself for doing that. I had my usual post-testing session nap, and when I woke the sense of him not being there was so strong that I had to spend a lot of effort making myself not get upset. He’s on a different shift to me now, so there’s not a lot of chance I’ll see him.

Time to have dinner with Lohn and Mara.

Wednesday, May 21

Trashy Mags For the Win

I went up to the roof today: it’s the first time the weather’s been good enough since I was released from the infirmary. Tare doesn’t really seem to have seasons, just storms. It still bothers me to be shut inside so much, but having a window makes a huge difference. I wonder if I have any chance at all of convincing them to make me one which opens.

I’d been there a while, reading an explanation of why everyone on Tare isn’t chalk white and suffering from vitamin E deficiency (special lighting, basically), when Zee showed up and sat down with me.

"That looks like your time for a serious talk expression. Something happen?"

"You’ll make me self-conscious," Zee said (with the easy confidence of a gorgeous, super-deadly woman). "And, yes, something is happening. A media storm about Arenrhon, via Kolar. Previously we’ve controlled information by allowing very few to return to Tare or Kolar after visiting Muina, and vetting outgoing communication. But that was always going to be a short-term solution as more and more people became involved. And Kolaren devices don’t connect to the interface, and thus don’t have the censor controls. One was smuggled back there, containing very complete details of the expeditions, Arenrhon–"

"Cass’s visit to Kalasa."

"There are many images of the Arenrhon site, including images of Third, Fourth and Eighth Squad, and you. It’s all over Kolar’s news networks, and is about to hit here. The fact that information between the planets depends on ships means we have a little warning."

"Setari losing more and more anonymity." I sighed. "You feel like doing some training or playing a game or something? Would rather not sit waiting for the initial reaction."

"You’re very calm about this," Zee said, sounding approving.

"Knew this one was coming. Too many people at Arenrhon who very interested in me – and Setari. Don’t like it, but not so upsetting as someone making lot of money off things they stole out of my file, or without warning seeing some girl pretending to go through that."

We went to the gymnasium and Zee put me through some mild resistance training and stretches, and then a short stint of fast walking on a treadmill. I’m not really up to jogging yet. I had switched my interface status to busy, which meant that while people could send me messages they shouldn’t expect me to respond. Zan and Mori both sent me messages, but I didn’t even look at them until Zee had decided I would fall over if I trained more, and we showered and took lunches back to her rooms to look the news over.

I check out the news about the Setari first, which was basically a frenzy of joy. Actual pictures of real Setari. No matter how accurate the drawings of those who had enjoyed a personal Setari sighting, they could not compare to proper images. They were nice quality pictures, too – clear and sharp, often close-ups of faces. They were already matched up to the dossiers which had been compiled from sightings over the years, and I noticed with amusement that the only person who didn’t have a clear picture was Ruuel, who seemed to have always been turned away.

The reaction to Arenrhon was unsurprising: upset about the implications of the worshipful imagery, anger that none of this had been communicated to the public.

I’d been avoiding any of the links that appeared to lead to me, but finally started browsing. Some of them were really great photos, making me look not half-bad looking, but it was very disconcerting how many were close-up. They’d used a zoom function to great effect. Much was being made of the fact that my eyes were different colours.

My favourite picture was one where I had one brow pulled a bit down and the corner of my mouth screwed up and an air of absolute incredulity – the kind of expression I’m sure I was wearing when Maze told me to put on a dress to meet the Nuran. I couldn’t resist one link titled Interplanetary Love!, and opened it to find a Kolaren trashy infozine with a picture of me smiling up at Arad Nalaz of Kolar’s Squad One, who was looking down at me in a kindly sort of way. That had been just after I’d been grilled by all those Kolaren archaeologists.

"I hope Nalaz doesn’t have a really jealous girlfriend," I said, speaking for the first time since Zee and I had ventured into the wilds of interface fervour. "I’ll have to remember not to smile in public at anything male in future. And, wow, there’s a lot of pictures of me. These were all taken in my last couple of days at Arenrhon, too. Whoever took these could qualify as a full-blown stalker."

There was no fooling Zee, who rubbed the back of my neck gently. "That looks like your pretending not to be upset expression."

I shrugged, though my face went hot. "I’m not saying I like this, because I don’t. But it’s…kind of distant from me. And it’s just pictures and information that everyone on Muina already knew: that I react weirdly but not usefully to the ruins, and that I can use the platforms to get myself in bad situations, was injured and taken back to Tare. A thousand people already knew that. The only real difference with that number changing to a billion is that I can read about their opinion of what I look like. Though – did you see all that stuff about how KOTIS was being too careless with me and that an oversight committee needs to be established to ensure I’m properly handled? What chance is there that actually happen?"

"Hard to say. There’s an oversight committee for the Setari and that’s been beneficial for us over the years. Do you feel KOTIS has been too careless with you?"

I had to think it over. After all, I’ve been hospitalised a half-dozen times since I was rescued.

"It’s like when I first arrived on Muina, and was trying to find something to eat. I looked for fruit that I could see animals were willing to eat, then did taste test, and ate more if it didn’t kill me. One of things I ate made me so sick. Was that too careless? I saw a bird eating some, and it looked and tasted, well, as non-poisonous as anything can look. I look like ordinary stray, so KOTIS treat me like one. Then find out have enhancing talent, so KOTIS test what enhancing talent does. Couldn’t know in advance that three Setari touching me at once give me heart attack. Obviously wouldn’t have arranged that test if had known, any more than I would eat fruit that make me vomit. Same with teleporting about on platforms. If platforms did that for anyone else, no way they would have had me stand on it. Is not to say that I don’t dislike some things. I drew my lab rat on clothes for a reason. Never consulted or told about almost anything, especially at start. Never agreed to follow anyone’s orders; just do so because seemed best option for me. Oversight committee…sounds like more people who get to read my file."

Zee stayed with me for my very low-impact training session with Mara, and then the whole squad came together for dinner. We ate something resembling doubled-over pizza in Maze’s quarters, the first time I’d been in there. I thought initially that he had no decoration in his public space at all, but every so often a bird flies across the room or patters around the floor, and treats the walls like they’re curtains it can hide behind. And there was a picture spot, which flicked through images of a whole bunch of people who looked like Maze, reminding me that the Setari all have families outside KOTIS. A few excess objects, a nice bowl on the table, an odd-looking wire statue. If there was anything which had belonged to his wife, I couldn’t tell.

None of First Squad seems to think all the revelation of the day will have any major consequences. I made sure to not act upset, and I didn’t really need to act. It does seem very distant and not part of my life and at least most of it is positive. The spin KOTIS put out about Earth being Muina’s sister planet seems to have held. But the pictures were another reminder that even ignoring second level monitoring, I don’t have any real privacy and I’m coming under more and more scrutiny. Everything I do, everything I say and see and hear, is recorded. Even this diary, well-protected by its barrier of foreign words, will stop being any kind of secret if the Tarens learn English from me (or other people from Earth).

I did figure out a solution to my worries about the record made of files I access. I just watch my conversation with my family over and over again. Not only does it make me feel better to see Mum, but anyone compiling statistics on my access patterns will be sure to put it down to watches encounter with family not gazes mournfully at Kaoren Ruuel. I always make sure to stop as soon as I move away from my family, then start again from the first time I see them.

This makes me sound really lame. But it does help to be able to look at him, and I would find it pretty unbearable to have my pathetic, one-sided crush exposed for everyone in KOTIS to laugh about, let alone risking it becoming public gossip. I don’t care at all if gossips make up patently false stories about me and every second Kolaren I talk to, but Ruuel matters.

It seems like forever since I had one of the really good dreams about him, but every damn day I wake up knowing he’s not there.

Thursday, May 22

Eleventh Squad

Eleventh Squad today: a team I’d only seen the once at the big parade where they demonstrated me to all the Setari. Didn’t go too badly. Their captain is a girl called Seq Endaran, who contacted me before the testing session and introduced herself before walking down to the test room with me to meet her squad members: Couran – Path Sight, Gate Sight; Genera – Ena manipulation; Wen, Seeth, Dava – combat. They’re a big-hitting squad, lots of big elemental talents. I started out giving Endaran points for good manners and feeling very positive, and she didn’t do anything to change my mind, but she also seemed kind of pleased with herself. I don’t know, maybe it’s just that so many of the big hitting squads love being able to hit even harder. The only person in the squad who really stood out for me was Wen, who just was very calm and cheerful, watching the testing session like it was a good special effects movie.

I’ve tested with so many squads now the faces are beginning to blur together.

Enhancing elemental talents takes a lot more out of me than Speed and Sights. I don’t even seem to get tired after a session which doesn’t involve elementals, but bring on a big-hitting squad and it’s a guaranteed afternoon nap.

Incredible storm outside. Black as pitch, lots of lightning, horizontal rain trying to pound the world to dust. I’m amazed the Tarens survived their early years here.

Friday, May 23

A little light gossip

Tomorrow’s the next episode of The Hidden War (the week here is six days). Mori asked me if I’d like to join them in watching it, but I said I’d pass. Not that I’m not going to watch it, but I plan to keep my breakdowns to myself from now on. We chatted about the big media storm, and how strange it was for some of the squads to have their images out there properly and how some of the drawings that people had made (Tare isn’t above fan art of every variety) had once bothered Mori a great deal, but she’d grown to care about it a lot less.

Mori also said that I was right about Sonn being very upset. The episode had shown her as an obedient henchman to Ruuel’s villain, and though no words were put in her mouth she was taking it badly. Ruuel’s only comment, apparently, has been to say that he expected them to have more sense. He’s been working Fourth unusually hard, though, which is the same tactic Mara uses on me when she thinks I’m fretting.

I wondered if the other squads – particularly Fifth – had been openly enjoying themselves at Fourth’s expense, but Mori hasn’t reached the point of being willing to talk about other squads with me. And I, in turn, am far too cautious to ever directly question her about Ruuel.

Generally a quiet day for me. Training with Mara, and medical tests, which are fortunately becoming a trifle less frequent. Lots of reading about me, and also about Arenrhon. Since the Lantarens were very unpopular on Tare and Kolar anyway, all this has done has confuse people and confirm their opinions that the Lantarens were to blame for the loss of Muina.

Saturday, May 24

Tenth Squad

Tenth Squad today. Tenth was the squad who went with Twelfth to rescue everyone at the Pillar. It brought a lot of memories back to work with them again. Their squad leader, Haral, is this calm, soft-spoken guy and I’d already had a demonstration of him being very good in an emergency.

We went through the testing quite thoroughly, even though all of Tenth had enhanced with me during the retrieval, and then did a bit of managing-the-stray combat training since we’re here. Tenth has a Telekinesis talent, Mane, and a Levitation talent, Tens, who are both female and shorter than me and we were all finding it funny working out comfortable ways for them to cart me about.

Another team lunch afterwards, and again lots of questions about Kalasa. It’s always easy to the spot the captain in the squad: the one keeping a watchful eye on me to see if I’m going to burst into tears. I don’t particularly mind talking about Kalasa, though I do wonder why the Setari feel the need to ask me questions when they’ve obviously all watched the log of me stumbling around the place. I was glad when it turned into a more general discussion about the Lantarens, and whether the people at Arenrhon were some kind of weird sub-cult or something known to all Lantarens.

I started to fall asleep, so Haral sent his squad off and escorted me back to my quarters.

"Thank you for indulging them," he said, as we rode the elevator down. "Are you facing the same interrogation from every squad you test with?"

"Some still in the must-be-very-proper stage," I said, and he gave me an amused smile.

"We’re working to adapt. We’ve been very well trained to deal with Ionoth, and each other, but not extraordinary girls from other worlds who keep completely altering the scope of our lives."

"Am pretty typical Australian," I said, opening my door to hide my embarrassment.

"Oztralya must be a disconcerting place, then," he said, then was distracted by a really spectacular lightning bolt outside. "There’s certainly few on Tare who could bear that in their living quarters, for instance. Let alone survive what you’ve endured."

His voice was still soft and calm, but very definite, and I was all of a sudden aware that he was an attractive person my own age, and these were my rooms. But I pushed all that aside and just said: "Is a thick window." Blushing madly, of course.

He smiled again, nodded, and left. After the door closed, I shut off the lights and sat in my window seat, watching another incredible lightning bolt.

I couldn’t decide if Haral was just being straightforwardly complimentary, or quietly indicating that he rather liked and admired me. Something in the way he’d said it just felt…charged. He is a Lightning talent, heh.

It’s hard to decide how I feel about the possibility. I was impressed by Haral during the retrieval, and I liked the comfortable way he worked with me today. He’s sort of relaxing, made me feel at ease. He’s fairly typical Taren in looks: golden skin and black hair, though with just the faintest hint of a curl, and his eyes are a clear, light brown. Like all the Setari, he looks very fit and impressive in his uniform. I would have felt immensely happy, back on Earth, if someone like him had shown any sign of liking me.

I fell asleep on my window seat, under the lightning, and dreamed of Ruuel. Not one of the good dreams, but of being in a palace full of towers and balconies, looking for him. I’d see him through a window and spend a small forever finding my way to where he was, but by the time I got there he was gone. Over and over, and I knew he was doing it deliberately, leaving whenever I came near him, and I woke up crying and ashamed.

Frankly, I’d rather have the dreams about lions. I really need to accept what my subconscious seems to be trying to tell me. Wish I could figure out how to do that, and stop working myself up like this.

I slept way too long – it’s quite late. The next episode of The Hidden War is in a few hours. I don’t know if I’ll watch it after all.

Sunday, May 25

Endorphins

I wasn’t paying enough attention in training today and got a big whack on my shoulder. Mara made me do push-ups for punishment, which I was oddly pleased about, since it means she considers me recovered enough to punish.

I’m in a more optimistic mood today than I have been for a while. I read back through a lot of my diary last night, and decided that, after all, I haven’t been chasing after Ruuel. I’ve never gone looking for him, or bugged him. I just think about him a lot and who does that hurt? Him being woken up because of my swimming experiment was bothering me, I suspect. The higher-ups seem to consider him my assigned captain when First Squad isn’t around, but I can be careful not to do anything which might require a lecture when First is on rotation, and that should fix that problem. I’m damned if I’m going to keep feeling bad about liking Ruuel if I do absolutely nothing to bother him.

My overall health really effects my mood too. Concentrating on school and training helps, and though the training leaves me sore and wiped out, it’s also an active, positive thing. I felt so sporty today, having one of the Setari’s physiotherapists rubbing their equivalent of Tiger Balm onto my back and doing some painful poking-fingers-into-muscles which hurt in a good way. And I doubt I would have survived all that swimming if I hadn’t been fitter than I was on Earth, so I’ll focus on at least getting back to that level as my next goal.

The Hidden War episode turned out to be uneventful, switching back to the characters from the main cast doing another mission. There was a brief mention of Squad Indigo and a mission to Muina to investigate a Ddura. They called Lastier that cold bastard and mentioned that all Indigo had achieved on the trip was to find a stray, but the episode’s focus was firmly on other things.

It’s really hard not to compare the various squads of The Hidden War to the real ones. The main character reminds me of Mori.

Monday, May 26

Sixth Squad

Sixth Squad today. They were the squad who’d been stationed outside the Pillar space when it all went pear-shaped. They’d sent Quane to get help, and went in to try and rescue people and fight off the Ionoth, only to all succumb. Ammas, their Telekinesis talent, had died. All that made me a little nervous about testing with them.

Their captain is a girl named Cormin, who had a touch of Taarel about her in terms of her air of command. She looked more Amerind than Asian, and was very decisive and efficient. Her attitude toward me was quietly polite but distant, and her squad followed her lead and were all very courteous but not remotely inclined to chat. A girl called Jorion has replaced Ammas, and she kept glancing at me when she thought I was turned away, a puzzled, evaluating look. I wonder if I’ll ever find out why. I never found out why Anya found me so annoying. I think it’s probably best not to spend too much energy trying to work these things out unless I’m assigned to a squad. There’s eighty-four active Setari, and every one of them is going to have an opinion about the enhancing stray.

Only Thirteenth left now, and nothing at all in my calendar next week. They obviously haven’t decided what to do with me. All this testing, but I’m not entirely sure they’ll allow me back into the spaces, even with First Squad. I also think they’ve had orders not to take me out into the city – First collected me for dinner again tonight, but in Mara’s quarters.

Tuesday, May 27

World of Mystery

I bought some fancy interface games today. I’ve been hesitating over joining an online game, but most them use voice chat, and I just can’t make myself sound enough like a Taren to risk that, even with the cool voice modifiers you can use to get in-character.

I’m also entirely uncertain whether I would be allowed to join: I’ve never tried to post on a public forum or communicate outside KOTIS, and that’s not just because I’m worried about the reaction of whoever I talk to. I’ve never been specifically forbidden to, but the Setari aren’t allowed to reveal their identities, and the Kalrani aren’t allowed to post on public forums at all. I don’t particularly want to deal with being ordered not to talk to people. I’m a lot more settled than I was, but I’m avoiding confrontations and upsets. I really don’t like how I’ve been feeling since Kalasa, and I don’t want to push myself just now.

The games I bought were single-player puzzle/adventure games. The first one I’m playing is a noir-ish murder mystery, set on Tare before computers, let alone the interface. It works as a really interesting history lesson for me, and is letting me dip my toe into the virtual worlds so many Tarens consider daily entertainment. In the game I look down at myself and I’m this six-foot guy. I reach out a hand and I’m missing my little finger. It’s very disorienting, and is only the tip of Tare’s virtual entertainments, and probably as full-on as I can manage at the moment. I’m still way too big a wuss to try any of the games which are in-skin. Sight and sound is more than enough.

Otherwise, full squad hand-to-hand training. I concentrated hard, and Mara said nice things about the effort I was putting in, but the gulf between me and First Squad is so monumental. At the same time, I’m better than I was. If I went back to Earth and some random thug tried to attack me I might have a chance of tripping him and making him fall down.

Thursday, May 29

Great Wall of Astroturf

I was nearly late for my session with Thirteenth Squad (thanks to my new game, which is very engrossing). The captain of Thirteenth is called Teer Alare, and he’s this absolute baby-face. He looks about fifteen – taller than me, but like he’s not old enough to shave. I could totally picture him sitting in front of the TV with Jules, playing Halo or some stupid skateboarding game. I was half expecting him to be wearing a goofy grin, and for every second word he used to be cool, but he was curtly professional and started us out at a spanking pace.

Thirteenth is a big hitting squad, so we were in the highly shielded training room, starting on the second person – a very grim-faced girl named Dry – when KOTIS went to full alert. Everyone went still, waiting, then a broadcast message appeared in the interface (red words in the mid-distance of my field of vision): "Massive at the Dohl Array."

Before any of us could react, Grif, the captain of Second Squad, brought me into a mission channel with his squad, and began rapidly adding squads. Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, Tenth, Eleventh and Thirteenth. Most of them were on their sleep shifts, more than a few only just struggling to consciousness. Everyone else was in the spaces or on Muina.

"Gather at Green Lock," Grif said. "We’ll be going through the spaces to Gorra, possibly collecting Sixth on the way, and then using transports to the Array. No delay."

That seemed to mean run. Alare gave his squad a hand signal, cast me a glance to make sure I understood, and it was a quick dash down a couple of corridors, a short elevator ride, another dash along a major travelator with lots of greysuits and pinksuits hopping hastily off it out of our way, then another elevator and another corridor. The elevators made it easier, giving me a chance to catch my breath. Everyone else was barely breathing quicker.

Eighth Squad went no connection before we were halfway there, and Fifth just as we arrived. All of Second Squad was waiting by the gate, along with a mixed crowd of partial squads.

"Thirteenth, go straight through," Grif said as we came up. "Further briefing once we’re at Gorra. Devlin, you’re with Fourth."

I promptly sat down on a seat I suspect had been deliberately left empty for me, and hoped I wasn’t too red in the face. A greysuit came disconcertingly out of nowhere and gave me a once-over. They can monitor my heartbeat, temperature, various chemical levels and so forth using the interface, but the greysuits are very fond of peering into my eyes and asking me whether I feel lethargic. Thirteenth went through, and then Fourth arrived all in a group.

Ruuel nodded at Grif, gave me a five-second glance which I interpreted as usual formation, and headed into the gate-lock. Auron paused beside me, offering me one of his shy smiles, and I stood and went in with him. The location of the gate appeared as a triangle in the interface and we went through without pause, not even waiting for the gate-lock to close.

Ruuel gave typically abbreviated orders once we were all through. "Auron, your sole role will be moving Devlin. Stay unenhanced for greater flexibility. Eyse, paired with Auron. Steady speed."

Auron lifted me off the ground with Levitation, and they began jogging at something just short of an all-out run. I’d never been on the Gorra rotation – it was five spaces long, but they were still empty from the last time they’d been cleared – and then we were in Gorra’s near-space which looked, unsurprisingly, just like Unara’s near-space. Tarens don’t go in for a great deal of architectural experimentation. We were through into a gate-lock about twenty minutes after setting out, which is pretty impressive time for reaching the other side of the planet.

We beat Eighth Squad, which confused me considerably until they arrived with Sixth. They’d detoured once they’d reached Gorra’s near-space and gone into the rotation Sixth was scheduled to clear, collecting them. Gorra had a KOTIS facility, barely, and we went straight to two tanz which were being prepped for us. These were flat things about three times the length of a bus, very similar to the transport I’d ridden in with Sa Lents to Unara: wedge-arrowhead airplanes.

My transport had Second, Fourth, Sixth and Eighth, and the other Fifth, Tenth, Eleventh and Thirteenth. There was a brief wait until we were all seated and the pre-flight routine underway before beginning our briefing, but there was already tons of massive news on the interface. I started out by looking Dohl Array up in the encyclopaedia.

Dohl Teva in Taren, and I’m not quite sure if array is the right word to translate to. It’s a gigantic series of underwater farms. Huge flexible clear tubes lifting from the ocean floor, bending and twisting in currents, their insides filled with different sorts of seaweeds and plants tended and harvested by drones. The ocean in the area is relatively shallow, and very clear and the place is one of the mainstays of food production on Tare. There are several fly-speck islands nearby given over to processing, and one slightly larger one, Kalane, with a population of nearly ten thousand. Tiny by Tare’s standards.

Tsur Selkie and a couple of bluesuits were brought into the mission channel as Second Squad arrived, and Selkie began the briefing as soon as all squads were seated

"First sighting was of swoops, and air units were detailed. While they were en route, a drone mechanic made this report."

A recording was relayed direct into the channel, a woman’s shaking voice: "This is Gensen XY, Dohl East Axis. There’s a – I don’t even have the words to describe it. Some kind of creature in the Array. Forwarding images from our external monitors."

I could see why the woman didn’t want to try describing it. The closest I can manage is a giant piece of black Astroturf – smooth on one side, all bristly on the other. But big in a way which was beyond things like football fields and more into golf courses. It was shaped like a frilly almond, swirling and twisting an impossible ballet through the vertical farms, the wake of its passing making them sway and wrench about madly. Occasionally a vein-like network of blue lines would light up across its non-bristly side and it looked quite beautiful. It reminded me a little of a smaller Ionoth First had killed on the Unstable Rotation.

The Astroturf wrapped itself around one of the vertical farms, like a carpet giving free hugs. And then the image changed to a shot of what was obviously the inside of the farm tube as it was squeezed and crushed, and a thousand wriggly black things tried to get inside, only to draw away.

"The aerial units made a surface sighting after dispatching the swoops," Selkie went on, "and an evaluation strike was ordered."

We were relayed an image of dark, oily-looking water and I searched for the massive only to realise everything was the massive. It was floating just under the surface. Two small wedge-shaped ships which moved rather like hummingbirds drifted into view, and one dropped abruptly down low, bolts of light peppering the darkness below. Puffs of steam rose from the water, and at first the only response was a sudden crowding of blue light to the area, then the whole vast surface of the massive roiled and bucked, tossing water into the air. The ship was already darting away, and the other one had released a more Earth-type weapon – some kind of missile – which hurtled toward it…then wobbled, paused, and reversed direction, shooting directly back the way it came. By the time it had exploded in mid-air, the massive had sunk out of sight.

"Drones from the Array were redeployed to track, but the next sighting was again from the air." Selkie gave us another image log. This was of a small island, a miniature pile of white blocks standing perched on a spar of rock poking out of the sea. I’d barely taken that in when a wall of black rose out of the ocean, reminding me of a waterfall in reverse, or a whale breaching insanely high. It came down on the island, covering it completely, and contracted as it had around the vertical farm.

"Therouk Island," Selkie said, clipped voice moving inexorably onward. "Processing, and residential. Two hundred and seventy-four on site. The structure began fracturing immediately. Currently eighty-nine alive. Most deaths have been from crushing."

He followed this with another log, one which I really wish I hadn’t watched. It was from a person on the island, trapped uncomfortably in a partially collapsed room, describing in a horrified tone the noises above him, grinding, scraping. And then black tentacles broke through the ceiling above and wrapped around him and pulled him upward and he was screaming in agony and struggling and there was nothing at all to be done.

Nils, who was sitting behind me, leaned forward and squeezed my shoulder. I smiled at him, glad to be sitting down, and tried not to show how sick I felt. I was hardly the only one. Par had gone quite grey. I doubt any of the Setari watched that without their stomach clenching.

"Air units attempted to draw it off, strafing with energy attacks, but it responded only by tightening its grip on the structure. The majority of survivors are gathered in a reinforced vault on the lowest level, with a handful of others scattered throughout. While evaluation is underway Charal, Palanty, and Eyse will attempt retrieval. Other assignments pending evaluation. Visual range in eight. Environmental conditions deteriorating."

"Eat something," Grif added.

Jeh Omai, Ketzaren’s friend from Second, handed me a molasses bar and for a short while everyone just ate, had a few mouthfuls of water, and cycled through the four toilets at the back of the half-empty transport. Sonn was assigned as my secondary babysitter, and Grif, Ruuel and Halla enhanced and sat studying the logs.

We reached the massive way too quickly, barely an hour after the alert was sounded. Not soon enough for another four people on Therouk Island. I started to look at the public media channels and saw that the other islands in the area were all frantically evacuating – escalating into wild panic on the largest, Kalane – and one was broadcasting an open link to a girl trapped alone in her room on Therouk, injured and begging for help. That was too hard, and I switched to watching the transport’s external feed, of ocean and sky paling into late afternoon, and a huge front of black storm clouds not quite in the direction we were flying.

"Third level monitoring established for the survivors," Grif said, as the faint hum of the tanz changed. "Destination ship incoming, primary contact Vichie. Charal, you’re coordinator."

Charal of Second, who is a quiet guy with eyes which droop down giving him a mournful look, nodded once and then he, Palanty of Fifth, and Mori dropped out of the main mission channel. KOTIS is still not willing to test teleportation enhanced – it’s apparently a very reliable talent so long as the person teleporting has seen or can see the location – but the potential consequences of it distorting are so great they’d rather not risk testing it with me. In this situation, I could guess that they weren’t entirely certain if the massive would have any impact, but the greater risk was exhaustion, trying to move over eighty people as quickly as possible.

As the three teleporters vanished, the two ships slowed to a hover. "All to the roof," Grif said, as exits to either side and in the ceiling opened.

It was chilly with a light wind outside, and I’m never really going to get used to floating high in the air. Therouk Island was not quite directly below us, much closer than I’d expected, and looked as if it had been wrapped in wet leather. Then Par set us both down on the reassuringly broad and almost flat roof of the transport and I had to switch back to using the transport’s external feed to see what was going on.

No surprise that Ruuel was primarily responsible for evaluation. He stayed floating off to one side, gazing down at the massive for a short eternity of unbroken contemplation. When he started speaking it was the same focused, exacting tone he uses for just about everything official.

"Electricity will be useless. Other elementals should all be effective, with Ice our best approach. In addition to repelling projectiles, the outer side is strongly absorbent of elemental attacks. We need to force it to lift if we’re to have any chance. No apparent central brain or weak point. Status on retrievals?"

"Still working on primary group." Grif began breaking the available Setari into three groups: the main attack force, a group of close-range or electric-focused talents who would be hunting any escort Ionoth, and the Devlin handlers who would make sure I didn’t fall off the transport or get eaten by a straying swoop. Beyond the evaluation, they weren’t using me to enhance anyone yet, and spent some time on technical details of which telekinetics would be carting who about, and what the order of enhancement would be.

"Primary group retrieved," Grif said, after tote-duty was settled.

"Air support unit en route to your location," Selkie put in. "We’ve isolated an intact upper chamber with active visual feed. Placement of charges at that point should achieve considerable damage, but it’s critical that we prevent it fleeing once injured."

"Use Ice to fix it, at least temporarily?" Grif suggested.

They went with that plan, and repositioned the ship while we waited for the air support unit with its explosives. As soon as it was close the three teleporters were recalled, even though they’d not been able to retrieve four unconscious people – a thing which no-one commented on, but which I could see they hated. The escort hunters had already gone, and everyone else gathered on the roof of the one ship, positioning themselves in order of who would enhance first. The three teleporters looked completely exhausted, drenched with sweat, and Grif had someone bring them one of the horrid super-energy drinks that are all salty and sweet at the same time, and make you instantly long for a chaser of water. I watched the storm, tiny flickers playing among the blackness. It was still far away, but the wind was picking up, and I could tell by the way a few of the Setari kept glancing at it that they didn’t want to wait too long.

"Air support on approach," Grif said, moments before one of the hummingbird fliers lifted into view. "Nise, retrieve the charges to the rear of this transport." He glanced at the three limp teleporters. "Palanty, Eyse – straightforward placement and then off-mission."

Charal went below straight away – he didn’t have the strength of the younger Setari and was very grey – while Nise from Fifth whisked across to the opening hatch of the flier and lifted out two warning-plastered crates, lowering them carefully onto the roof of our transport. Mori and Bayen Palanty teleported one each; Mori first, then Palanty. That barely took a minute, but we paused again in the increasing wind to make sure that everyone’s timing was exact. The Ice talents would all enhance, and race down to the rear of the massive where it was still partially in the water. While they moved, the rest of the main attack force would enhance as the transport circled us around and down to a strike location. The Setari would attack while the transport moved on to a second point.

They expected the Ice squad to have commenced freezing as much as possible of the water and rock and massive together by the time the ship hit the strike point and the charges Mori and Palanty had teleported onto the island would be detonated as soon as the transport darted past the immediate danger zone. It would circle around to the rear to be close to the Ice squad for a second enhancement and then they – presuming the massive hadn’t broken loose – would continue their freezing from the front.

A great deal was dependant on the massive not breaking loose, which was why the Ice squad was so focused on holding it in place. Setari are far less effective under water, and the thing was so quick below the surface that there was too much chance of it getting away.

Grif was frowning, not toward the storm front but toward a flicker and glimmer some distance away which I realised was the group of Setari assigned to fighting escort Ionoth. But then he said: "At ready, Kajal."

"Commencing," Kajal replied, fingertips barely brushing my shoulder. He looked tense, and also a little hyped, but at least not interested in showing me his opinion of strays. There were eight Setari with us who had strong Ice talents, and they had two telekinetics assigned to cart about the ones who couldn’t manage that themselves. They’d barely taken off before the ship moved into a glide which forced me to change my stance to keep upright.

The second attack squad began enhancing, while Grif murmured to me: "Call a stop to the enhancements immediately if it starts to overwhelm you." The look he gave Par and Sonn underlined the order, and then he signalled for the surrounding Setari to take off and said: "Clear."

Kajal’s voice came over the interface: "Attack begins."

The transport was at the wrong angle for me to see the start of the ice, but when Selkie said: "Detonate," I couldn’t miss the reaction of the massive. The top of it bulged upward – in one or two places fragments of white stone actually flying through it – but to my disappointment it hadn’t ended up with a huge hole in the middle. For a moment it didn’t react at all, and then it started scrunching backward like a big flat caterPillar.

"Nise, use rubble to try and knock it upward," Grif ordered. "Kanato, take your group forward and target the edge to gauge effect."

Five Setari dropped down, setting the retreating edge of the thing blazing. But it was like destroying only the fringy bits of a carpet, and the thing showed no sign of lifting as they wanted. It was so huge.

By this time the transport had circled around to the rear and I could see the work of the ice. I was really surprised at how much they’d made so quickly, like a mini-glacier rising out of the water. I found out later that while Ice talents can produce it apparently out of nothing, the amount of water in the air makes a huge difference, and having an ocean to draw on is as good as being enhanced. The ice was cracking, though, as the thing tried to pull free. It couldn’t immediately manage it, and the folds began to gather and bunch up. The Ice group took advantage of that, catching the folds in the growing trap.

"Attack wherever it’s slightly raised," Grif said, and the main attack split to either side, blasting into the folds. The Ice group began to return to the transport in pairs to enhance, darting back quickly to continue to reinforce the glacier as parts of it shattered and crumbled. The transport moved around to the side as the massive changed tack, hunching down and trying to seal all access to its underside.

The nearest group took the opportunity to enhance, and then Ruuel, who was floating somewhere underneath the ship, said: "It’s preparing an offensive attack. Gain distance and circle to the front, all forces."

Brilliant blue lines were gathering on the massive’s exposed back. My attention was distracted by Sonn, telling me to kneel for balance and grip the edge of the hatch as the transport put on a sudden burst of speed, causing more than a few of the returning Setari to stagger and follow Sonn’s lead.

The massive was folding itself vertically, still trying to keep its sides sealed. I’m not sure it could even tell if the Setari had retreated as it began to produce such an intensity of power it burned little vein-like afterimages into everything I was seeing.

"After the blast, it intends to leap forward," Ruuel said. "On my signal, go low, strafe the underside with everything you have. Ice, you will have the barest chance to retrap it."

The massive’s brightness climaxed in a tremendous arcing halo, a display of lightning to put anything the Setari could do to shame. The wind brought the scent of ozone so strong it felt like my nose was being scoured, and I had my eyes squeezed shut when Ruuel said: "Go."

I haven’t watched the mission report showing them fly underneath the thing as it leaped forward. The whole idea of it makes me nervous, because it could so easily have crushed them. I stayed down, resting back on my heels, and didn’t even let myself look using the transport’s view until I heard the faint relieved sound Sonn made.

Caught a second time, with its underside blasted from below, the massive reared up perilously and then flipped backward, trying to jerk itself free. If it had managed it in the first lunge it would probably have escaped, but instead it exposed itself in the worst way to further layers of ice, was pinned wrong-side out and unprotected from unrelenting pounding. The fliers carefully manoeuvred in to join the Setari, blasting away with their weapons.

The thing was just so damn large, and didn’t have any kind of head or heart they could concentrate on. It took ten full minutes of relentless hammering before it stopped trying to break free. The last enhancement cycle, I really started to feel it, a painful effort every time anyone so much as brushed against me and they weren’t even halfway through the cycle before I looked up at Sonn and didn’t have to say anything at all. I think she’d been about to call it anyway, immediately saying: "Devlin’s at her limit. Returning below."

Par levitated me down, then he and Sonn were called away to support the escort-chasing group, who were close to being overwhelmed by something like fifty swoops, but had held off reporting numbers until the massive was beyond escape. Everyone who wasn’t in a state of collapse went off to help them. One of our entourage of greysuits made me drink something which tasted like caramel and hot milk, and I even felt her touch as effort and protested a little incoherently before passing out in the seat next to where Mori was already sleeping.

Zzz.

I woke on a very flat, hard bed in a nook hidden by a curtain. A girl of about eleven was standing clutching the corner of the bed by my foot, staring at me. She was totally Wednesday Addams: tight black braids, big forehead, huge eyes. It took me a minute of staring back at her to decide I wasn’t hallucinating.

"Are you just going to lie there?" she asked, when I didn’t do anything.

"Are you just going to stand there?" I asked. It was so disorienting, to be on the ship, and then somewhere else with someone I’d never seen before, and no sense of transition at all.

"No. But I can’t interview you while you’re lying down. It would look bad."

I blinked at the impatient tone, and rubbed sleep out of my eyes. "I under impression that random junior reporters not able record my image."

"I can log your outline." Scornful now. "Hurry and sit up. I’ve a lot of questions and hardly any time."

"I tell you what," I said, propping myself on one elbow. "I trade you question for question. You first: where is here?"

"Timesa. My turn. What do you miss most about your home world?"

"My family."

"Other than your family."

"That a different question." I smiled at her provokingly, shifting to prop my back against the wall while looking up Timesa in the encyclopaedia. It was another of the little food-processing settlements scattered through the Array. The interface told me it was two kasse (about five hours) since the massive battle. "We’re waiting out that storm here?"

"Uhuh. What, other than your family, do you miss most about your home world?"

"My friends," I said, grinned at the look on her face, and added: "And the food, the music, the stories. I miss a lot some of the things I was reading, because I don’t get to find out how end."

"What’s the biggest difference between the people on your world and the people here?"

I considered pointing out that it was my turn, but instead glanced at the team lists to see who was awake. Most everyone was out of it though, here and back at base. First Squad was back from their rotation, but asleep. I had some emails from them waiting for me. "Tare less diverse than Earth," I said, after thinking about it. "Everyone here speak same language; Earth has hundreds. On Earth, more variety in the way people look. Many more different customs." And more misunderstandings and wars as a result. "But no psychic people."

Ruuel was awake, but I’m being very strict with myself about contacting him, so settled on Nils instead. I sent him a text: "Need to be saved from precocious little girl."

"You get to work with the Setari, right? What talents do you have?"

"Talent for getting headaches, mainly. Do you have any talents?"

Nils, sounding like he was laughing, opened a channel and said: "Glad to see you’re awake. What’s this dire peril?"

"Levitation," the girl said tightly, though I couldn’t tell if she was annoyed at me for being facetious or for the question. She tilted her head, and I realised that like me she was having a conversation with someone else at the same time – people feeding her questions, judging from her expression as she asked: "Which Setari is the best looking?"

"Third Squad captain," I said without hesitation, adding: "Being able to fly one of best talents. Would like to have that one. Is that how you got in here?" To Nils I said: "Intrepid girl reporter woke me up for exclusive interview. Being very indiscreet."

"How much of The Hidden War episode about you was correct?" the girl asked, ignoring my question. "And did you like it?"

"There was a lot of made-up stuff," I said. "But some of it was real, like that bit where I was nearly stood on by something in the middle of the night. Don’t think I could ever really enjoy watching that. At the time was very upset because someone had taken the things which had happened to me and turned into entertainment, just so they could make money." I thought about adding a stalwart defence of Fourth Squad, but was spared having to decide if that was a good idea by the faint shushing noise of a door.

The girl glanced around, then crossed her arms and waited defiantly as the curtain pulled back to reveal both Nils and Ruuel. "You’re interrupting," she snapped, totally unfazed by six-foot-something, black-suited, uber-dangerous psychics.

Nils laughed, sounding surprised but unbothered. "I’m often told I have no sense of timing," he said easily. He gestured with his hand and the girl rose a couple of feet off the ground. "But I am irresistible," he added, and walked off with her, ignoring her outraged demand to be put down.

Highly amused, I looked at Ruuel and realised he was annoyed, his eyes narrowed and his mouth very flat. It’s such a rare thing for him to show anything but his captain expression that I felt sick with dismay, and said in an embarrassingly plaintive tone: "Would have felt silly sound alert on little girl."

"You’ve forgotten the lesson of the cat," he said, but something had shifted in his eyes and he suddenly seemed more his usual self.

"Ghost kind of a mixed lesson," I pointed out, trying not to show how relieved I was. "And if she’d wanted to hurt me, she could have done it before waking me up and asking me questions. Is everyone all right? I fell asleep before fight was over."

"No fatalities." He stepped back as one of our attendant greysuits showed up. "Food down the hall when you’re done."

The greysuit – one from Gorra who didn’t usually have a chance to test his theories on the stray – was really interested in whether being pushed to my enhancing limits had had any effect on me, but frustrated that they didn’t have any of their fancier scanning equipment on hand. I was distracted by the rest of what proved to be Timesa’s small medical facility, which was overcrowded with seven injured Setari, and me in for observation. I was surrounded by little alcoves with curtains and wanted to see if any of my friends were behind them, but the only person I could see enough of was Hasen from Eighth, her nanosuit partially withdrawn and the exposed skin of her shoulder covered with liquid bandage.

After locating the nearest bathroom first, I found Nils, and Endaran from Eleventh, waiting in a largish conference room along with another greysuit, two greensuits, and the bluesuit in charge off in one corner talking to someone I assumed was local to the island. I gave them all a vague and general smile before helping myself to the little buffet laid out on the table, sitting down next to Endaran. I was seriously starving.

While I ate, Nils tried to tease me about my interview, which had taken about two minutes to reach worldwide transmission. The girl, Palan Leoda, had levitated up the shaft of something like a dumb-waiter to win a bet that she could get in to talk to me. The other children in her class had promptly begun feeding her questions, and now half the planet was dissecting my answers. Everyone seems to have leapt to the conclusion that Nils is the Third Squad captain and that I’m desperately in love with him. He does have a very sexy voice.

I was still pretty tired, and went back to the medical facility to sleep again until Mori woke me when it was time to go. Most everyone was awake by then (another kasse along). All but the injured had been sleeping on the transports. Ironically they’d brought me into the facility so I could be under closer medical observation, but there’s no way Wednesday could have reached me if they’d just left me with everyone else.

A few of the injured would be returning all the way to the main KOTIS facility using transports rather than through the spaces from Gorra. Eighth Squad came out worst from the clean-up of the swoops. Bryze had a broken leg and Hasen was speared by a beak almost through her shoulder.

The trip to Gorra wasn’t very relaxing, since it had stopped raining but was still extremely windy, and occasionally the engines of the transport rose to an audible whine, or we would gain or drop altitude alarmingly. I hate to imagine how bad it must have been to ground us altogether. Everyone was quiet and grim, probably, like me, reviewing the post-storm images of the little island with the massive half falling off what little remained of the buildings underneath. It had been treating the buildings like barnacles, breaking them open and picking out the flesh inside, then chipping down further for more. Add a few explosives on to that and there wasn’t much remaining of the processing facility.

Rather than look at it, I said to Mori: "Realised another reason why Setari hunt Ionoth in spaces instead of in real-space. Much better weather."

"Absolutely," she said. "We would have trouble surviving the battleground, let alone the battle. Does Earth ever face storms this bad?"

I had no idea how to measure them comparatively, and shrugged. "Think it’s more frequency that’s the issue. Earth has destructive storms, but we don’t have them every week all over the planet."

"An extreme rather than the normal state. What about Earth compared to Muina?"

"Hard to say – only ever saw a bit of rain there. No really violent storms. Think it must be a lot more geologically stable, though, since your language doesn’t even have words for things like volcanos or tsunamis."

"Volcanos?" Par repeated curiously.

"When burning liquid rock is pushed up to the surface, out of the planet’s core."

Par gave me a very uncertain look, and Mori frowned. Nils, behind me again, leaned forward to ask: "Are you being serious?"

The short remainder of the flight back to Gorra involved my feeble explanations of tectonic plates, earthquakes, tsunamis, hot springs, bubbling mud pools, pyroclastic clouds, Pompeii, and the prospect of California falling into the ocean. They weren’t quite sure whether to believe me, and now have a distortedly dramatic view of what life on Earth is like. I’ve been describing Earth to people for months, but there’s still so much I’ve never even mentioned, or have given only half-assed explanations for. It’s like the story of the group of blind people trying to get an image of an elephant by touch.

I think I also helped distract them from the recent fight which, though it didn’t involve any Setari deaths, was not by any means easy and had as its prelude the death of nearly two hundred people. It’s the second massive to emerge on Tare in a short few years, and the number of escort Ionoth was by far the most they’ve ever seen. Without me along it would have taken them a lot longer to kill the massive, and with the storm and swoops factored in, any number of little islands might have been crunched before they’d finished it off. For all the killing they’d done, for all they could now go to Muina, they were no further along to finding a solution to the tearing of the spaces. And the problem was getting worse.

We walked rather than ran back from Gorra to the main KOTIS facility on Konna, with the usual brisk care Fourth Squad takes to everything. When we finally arrived, Ruuel gave everyone a nod and said: "Free time until the rotations have been rearranged. Devlin, report to medical."

I expected that, so didn’t pull a face at him, just made sure to detour back to my rooms for a shower and to grab my diary first. The greysuits love to add to their collection of stray’s brain scans. And I have nothing in my calendar any more, and aren’t assigned to anything.

I think I figured out why Ruuel was so annoyed with me, though. I was assigned to Fourth Squad, at least nominally, yet reported Wednesday Addams to Nils instead of my captain-of-the-moment. And Fourth Squad’s had enough grief lately about their fictional treatment of me. Any hint that I preferred not to be working with them was pretty much guaranteed to get me a black mark in Ruuel’s books.

Can’t risk showing any hint of how much I want to be around Ruuel. Can’t let anyone think I don’t want to be around Ruuel. Can’t win.

Friday, May 30

Long Term

I spent a lot of today on the roof. It was windy and overcast, but nothing dramatic. After I escaped from medical yesterday, Ketzaren and Alay took me for a jog around the stairs training course (in other words, we started out jogging, and then there was a lot of walking involved while I caught my breath), and later First Squad had me for dinner again.

We had a pretty frank discussion about the increasing number of Ionoth. Just as Taarel had said, all squads are reporting increased populations in the known spaces, and larger numbers of roamers. More new gates are tearing, too. It’s not like Tare’s going to be overwhelmed next week or anything, but First didn’t hide that the long-term situation wasn’t looking great.

Zee put it most bluntly. "Even if we do succeed in gaining access to Kalasa, there’s no guarantee that there are explanations there. No guarantee that there is any kind of solution. And the timeframe is beginning tighten."

Nor did they pretend that experiments with me trying to get someone into Kalasa weren’t likely to happen sooner rather than later, though they haven’t been scheduled yet. I’m glad I’ve been preparing myself.

Saturday, May 31

Tentacles v Otters

Exceptionally horrible night. I’d been relieved when I hadn’t suffered through any memorable nightmares after the battle with the massive, but I guess I was just saving it up because it completely took me over last night. Not the battle itself, but I dreamed of waking up hearing a grinding noise above me and then these black tentacles would break through the ceiling and grab me and my skin would be burning, melting with acid and it would lift me up and I’d be screaming and then I’d wake up and be in my bed panting and upset and then there would be this grinding noise above me –

I don’t know how many times it repeated. When I finally did wake up properly, I was so freaked out I was convinced that I was still dreaming, and pretty much crawled out of the room trying to escape the next onslaught. Then I broke down clutching one of my couches and ended up crying in my shower for half an hour straight. I’d only been asleep a couple of hours, too, and felt sick and exhausted, but would rather have died than go back to bed.

Everyone I would have wanted to talk to was either asleep or on rotation. Even Ghost wasn’t around, and eventually I contacted Ista Chemie, the greysuit Zee had taken me to for tests last time I’d had really bad nightmares. She was happy to tape monitors all over me in medical. Not that I cared about their tests; I just couldn’t stand to go back to my room, and was hoping that being monitored would have the same effect as last time and mean I slept normally.

No such luck. The only difference to my dream was the setting, and I dreamed that I was lying in medical waiting to get to sleep when the massive came, and that it ate the greysuits along with me. It kept repeating, a half-dozen times I think, and then the next time it reset Ruuel walked into the examining room, gave me a stern look and said: "Stop this." The scraping, grinding noise started above him, but though he glanced up, he just said: "You’re doing it yourself. Wake up."

I stared at him, and saw that I was holding his hand, gripping it so tightly my knuckles were white. And opened my eyes to find that I was.

"Well done."

I looked past him at the ceiling, and while there was no grinding I was totally convinced it was only a matter of time, and I think if he’d let my hand go I would have had complete hysterics. As it was I lay there and shook and didn’t take in whatever Ista Chemie was saying to me and eventually she went away and came back with something for me to drink which tasted so awful I snapped out of it a little.

"Really hope that was a stimulant," I said, after I’d stopped choking on it.

"A fortifier," she said, sounding a bit like she needed one herself. She, and the two other technicians I could see, were all white and upset looking.

I looked up at Ruuel – still entirely unwilling to let go of his hand – and he said: "Watch this," and gave me a log file.

It was from a scanner’s view, not from the technicians', and showed me lying on the couch, eyes closed and breathing deeply. Ista Chemie and another of the technicians were beside me, probably talking over the interface so as not to disturb me. I started to shift and move, but the two greysuits looked up, confused, at this grinding noise coming from above them. Then Ista Chemie staggered and fell, clutching her side and the other technician grabbed his face and doubled over. I writhed about violently, and thick red marks appeared wherever my skin was exposed by the cut-offs and t-shirt I’d worn to testing, and then I went limp, panting, the marks fading.

The greysuits, astonished and panicked, retreated out of the room, and I just lay there – no doubt until the dream started again, but I didn’t watch that long.

"Sorry," I said to Ista Chemie. "More than you bargained for."

She gave me a rather strained smile. "We think it’s a variety of Ena manipulation. You are trying to make your dream reality."

"Trying not the right word," I said.

"This may be related to the ability which took you back to your own world’s near-space," Ruuel said. "Although it appears actually bringing a massive into being is beyond you. You haven’t been dreaming like this since Annan brought you for testing?"

"No."

"Not immediately after the recent battle?" Ista Chemie asked.

"No." Being careful not to look at Ruuel, and yet not loosening my death-grip on his hand, I added: "Think maybe this started after I went home. To Earth. Had a really strong dream while still in medical wing, but remember feeling mainly angry at the time, not scared–"

Ruuel broke in: "What was the dream about?"

"People doing medical things to me that I really didn’t want them to do," I said, very neutrally. "And then dreams after the Pillar – not specifically about the Cruzatch, but really bad dreams of ducking under things, over and over. Next really strong dreams were after assigned to Muina – they weren’t nightmares. Mainly had dreams about being asleep on the Litara, peaceful sorts of dreams, but very real. Maybe for a week every night."

I could feel my face heating up, and had no doubt Ruuel at least could tell I was leaving something out of peaceful sorts of dreams, but nothing could have made me describe them.

"After that, was having awful fever-dreams of being chased waiting to be rescued after Kalasa, and then that time after my file was made so entertaining. Tonight’s been the worst, though. Couldn’t wake up." I tightened my grip on Ruuel’s hand, then finally forced myself to let go.

He was wearing full gloves, but I don’t know if they would have completely protected him from the raw, gibbering terror I must have been projecting. He never made the slightest move to pull away, and I was humiliatingly grateful for that. Even then I couldn’t stop myself from looking up at the ceiling, just in case, then said as calmly as I could manage: "Not very keen on sleeping now."

"You seem at least marginally aware of your surroundings while you dream," Ruuel said. "Annan noted that you were reassured by her presence?"

I nodded. "It’s like she – and you just then – come into my dream. Tell me I’m safe."

"While we technicians are not so reassuring," Ista Chemie said, a little greyly. I think she’ll be having a few nightmares on my account. "Quite aside from the effects you were producing – which were painful but not life-threatening – that is a sleep which has the potential to kill you. Your energy use was beyond healthy limits."

I glanced at Ruuel, but he was gazing into the middle-distance, discussing me with somebody. My head was throbbing, so I asked Ista Chemie if I could have something for it, and was glad she didn’t tell me I’d have to wait until they’d done more tests. I was desperately tired, too, and getting stressed out about falling back to sleep, or maybe still being asleep, and the memory of it all filled me up so that I started staring at the ceiling again until Ruuel put his hand on my shoulder and told me: "Stop that."

"Am trying," I said, sounding very doubtful. "New useful talents to add to getting headaches, and seeing blurry things. Extra strength dreams."

"Strong talents left untrained and undirected are often self-destructive," he said, unimpressed by my pity party. "This seems to be a combination of a formidable Ena manipulation ability and the Sight talent we’ve seen hints of previously. The obvious course is to train you in the techniques used for other Sight talents, many of whom also have issues with dreams. Until you’ve reached some measure of self-control, we’ll return you to a higher level of vitals monitoring." He gave me a steady look in return for my unenthusiastic reaction. "The monitor will be active only while you’re asleep. If your heart rate spikes, one of your squad members will be given access to your quarters to sit with you, and attempt to wake you if their presence alone is not sufficient."

That was a more bearable approach than I’d been fearing. I’d half expected to be stuck back in medical having nightmares for dozens of interested greysuits. I think Ruuel felt me relax a little, because he nodded, then waited while Ista Chemie pressed a cold tube – headache stuff – against my arm.

"To which end, we’ll start with a visualisation technique," he said. "Close your eyes." He waited until I (reluctantly) did, his hand still on my shoulder. "Now, think of a place which you associate with calm and safety." He paused, then with a slightly different note to his voice, said: "Think of the stream with otters, near Pandora. Picture walking along the shore of the lake toward it. The stones beneath your feet crunch and click, and there is a cool mist against your skin. A bird makes a noise to your right, the sound lifting into the air. There is a tumble of rock ahead, marked by a small pile of pebbles. You approach in silence, seeing the stream, shaded and half-real. You sit carefully on the rock. It is rough beneath one hand, and through the cold you take in the scent of some unknown greenery you crushed on your last step. The water murmurs as you wait, and you keep yourself still, searching for movement in the liquid shadows."

I dreamed of otters. Of sitting watching otters, with Ruuel beside me, just as had really happened, except he had his hand on my shoulder, and I could feel the warmth of him. The tight, sick dread faded completely out of memory. After a long while Maze came and sat on my other side, and Ruuel went away. Then Alay swapped for Maze, and then Mara curling an arm around my waist. Then I woke up and Mara was there, sitting on a chair which had been brought into the test room.

"Bet you never guessed how much babysitting involved in this job," I said.

"Tch – there’s so many reports to read that an excuse to sit down is never a bad thing." She looked me over as I wriggled out of the embrace of the sense-bed (which always tends to mould itself around me a little too tightly if I lay too still for too long). "Feeling better?"

I nodded, though couldn’t quite resist a glance at the ceiling. "Just really hungry. We allowed to leave?"

"I knew those dreams had to be serious for you to volunteer to go anywhere near medical," she said. "Yes, they’ve cleared you for the moment."

Happy to escape, I detoured back to my quarters to shower and change (and, to be honest, so Mara was with me when I went back there). Then to the canteen, where I was intent on eating two or three breakfasts. Going to the canteen these days is a big contrast to my first few weeks of visits, because now that I’ve tested with all the squads it’s rare that people don’t at least say hello. Mara picked at a light lunch until I came up for air, watching me critically.

"The technicians, once they’d recovered from the shock, managed to identify two synapse patterns active while you were sleeping. One is very similar to Ena manipulation, though they don’t believe it is quite the same talent. The other you continued to use, even when you stopped dreaming of the massive. It’s the same area of your brain which was active when your sight was blurring at Arenrhon. What was your last dream about?"

"Watching otters – exactly what Ruuel told me to picture. Guess I’m pretty easily influenced." I paused, draining the last of the tangy drink I like. "Did Maze come and sit with me after Ruuel? And then Alay, and then you?"

"Well, that confirms that you can tell we’re there."

"That’s what I dreamed. But I don’t seem to notice the technicians."

"The strength of the Setari’s affinity to the Ena is probably the deciding factor. First and Fourth will be primarily assigned to, ah, babysitting you, with Second and Third in reserve. Anyone else you’re comfortable enough with to include?"

"Zan. Think training really make me stop having nightmares?"

"Possibly. Some Sight talents are plagued by dreams, and Sights discipline at least isn’t likely to hurt you. There’s been some hesitation about actively training you with the Ena manipulation talent in case it strengthens whatever you did to return to your home world."

"Or lets me make real tentacles, instead of just noises."

"That too." Mara shook her head. "The thought that you might dream yourself to death is hardly comforting. At any rate, we’re going to increase your fitness training, and add fairly intensive Sights training – even though we’re not entirely certain what Sight it is we’re training you for. Between that, some weapons training, in case they do go ahead with attempting to locate Kalasa through you." She grinned. "And you’re not to listen to any of Nils' offers to help you get to sleep."

"Zee wouldn’t forgive me," I said, trying to be all nonchalant, though I could feel myself blushing.

"Zee isn’t involved with Nils Sayate," Mara said, lifting her eyebrows.

"Would still matter to her."

Mara didn’t comment about that, but she didn’t deny it either. Instead she spent the day working me into the ground – and making me really regret eating such a large breakfast. She and Ketzaren tag-teamed me till well into the afternoon, with the rest of First Squad showing up for dinner, and then we all played an interface game, a memory game with puzzles. I wasn’t too bad at the memory, but hopeless at half of the puzzles. It was really a lot of fun, though.

Mara asked me if I wanted her to stay when I went to bed, and I was more than a little tempted, but I told her that I was going to try thinking of otters and see if that worked.

"But glad knowing someone come wake me up if gets bad," I said.

She gave me a strange smile and hugged me. "I’m glad you still trust us enough to talk to," she said, and her voice was angry. "That wretched program, so badly timed–" She made an exasperated noise and drew back. "Just remember that you’re with friends. There’s never a need to hide when you’re hurting."

It’s hard not to be pleased that Mara considers me a friend. Not so good is how obviously worried about me she is. I’m not doing a good enough job hiding how close I am to falling apart. Because I’m back to being more than a useful enhancing stray. I’m yet again an irreplaceable key to part of Muina. Worse, I’m someone who can hurt people. I don’t want to be someone who can hurt people. I don’t know if I can even stop myself from hurting me. Talking about it a little to Mara helped, but if I let anyone know that being alone in my quarters outright scares me, they might park me permanently in medical.

As it is, I’m going to sleep in my window seat.

Fortunately, a few minutes ago Third Squad arrived back from Muina. Eeli sent a channel request and then overwhelmed me with excited burble trying to update me on everything they’d been doing (mainly continuing the exploration of Nurioth, and surveying widely around Pandora), and also asking me all these questions about the massive fight. Eventually I figured out that she was particularly happy that I’d said that the Third Squad captain was the best-looking Setari. She adores Taarel so.

It’s hard not to feel upbeat after talking to Eeli.

There’s a new The Hidden War episode tonight, but even though I slept really late into my shift, all the exercise makes me doubtful I’ll be able to hold out till it airs. Far more interesting to me is that my calendar filled up while I was chatting to Eeli. The inevitable medical exams, lots of exercising with First Squad, and a couple of sessions of weapons training with someone called Perrin Drake. And Sights training every day with Ruuel.

Strangely enough, my first reaction wasn’t positive. Not that I like him any less – more than ever, in fact – and I don’t doubt he’ll be as good a teacher as he is a captain. But it will be like when I was attached to Fourth Squad on Muina. I’ll be an assignment and the assignment will end and I’ll be someone else’s problem for a while. I can’t think of any way to guard against that.

And I don’t want to associate Ruuel with tests and experiments, for him to ring a bell and see if I drool on cue. I don’t want him to be the one treating me as a lab rat.

Not that I get any choice. Tonight I’ll replay him telling me to think about otters, and probably feel just as surprised and glad that he remembered that so distinctly.

I can still feel his hand.

June

Sunday, June 1

Pedestal, schmedestal

I was right to worry about being treated as an experiment by Ruuel.

The day started well enough. I was pleased with myself for succeeding in dreaming of otters, and in a calm frame of mind. There was an email from Nenna waiting for me, and after I read it I had to go and watch last night’s The Hidden War episode, because Nenna’s email was an apology for it.

To think I used to think it would be cool to go on reality TV. Nothing makes me feel less like myself than to watch my introduction to Tare turned into entertainment.

It wasn’t as bad as Nenna obviously felt. The entire episode was from Nenna’s point of view (or a thinly disguised version of Nenna called Senna) and was all about her Dad bringing home a stray to foster. Since most of my time with the Lents wouldn’t have been detailed on my file, it was pretty obvious the scriptwriters had sat down with Nenna, and maybe the rest of her family, and had her describe everything I’d said and done while I was there. From the level of embarrassment in Nenna’s email, I’m presuming she got paid for it.

The episode was really about Nenna, about what it had been like for an ordinary Taren girl to have an alien stray added to her family. They’d even written in a boyfriend for her, just so he could be caught ogling the stray’s legs and make Senna feel conflicted. And there were all these conversations I’d never heard, so didn’t know if they were true. Did Nenna’s sister protest the idea of her father taking in a stray in the first place? Did the Lents really have a doubtful discussion about my difficulties with the language and how little I seemed to be progressing? The actress’s very fractured Taren is being used as a source of comedy and cuteness, far more appealing than the reality – it helps when the person saying things backward and being barely comprehendible is a gorgeous, kittenish girl with huge eyes, and the words she uses incorrectly tend to be mild double entendres or accidentally witty.

I wonder what Earth’s copyright position is on the songs I’d played to people from my phone being used in Taren television shows? It was very weird to hear Gwen Stefani and the Portal closing credits song being used in a Taren show. I could tell from the brief explanation given for the Portal song that my lab rat is definitely going to feature in upcoming episodes.

They showed Nenna and me falling and getting hurt, and then it stayed with Nenna for her first few days in hospital, scared and guilty and angry, and facing arduous rehabilitation work. If she’d been relying on Earth’s level of medical technology, she’d be in a wheelchair for life and that would be my fault. Of course, on Earth people don’t teleport and neither of us would have been hurt.

Instead of replying to Nenna’s email, I sent her a channel request and ended up chatting to her for half an hour. The fact that she’d spoken to the writers didn’t bother me nearly as much as the thought of her hating me, and I was incredibly relieved that blaming me for her injuries wasn’t the reason she hadn’t returned my emails[3].

Once she was sure that I really wasn’t upset, Nenna reverted to the girl I was more familiar with, and immediately started trying to pump me about the Setari. I did tell her there was someone in Third Squad who reminded me so much of her, but figured it was best to wriggle out of telling her any real detail.

First Squad were on rotation today, but that didn’t stop Mara from snaffling me before they were due to go out and throwing balls at me, and then ordering me to go through some of the junior grade combat exercises after lunch (there’s lots of interfaced-based training I can follow – I don’t actually need any of the Setari to stand over me to do it). And in this case I was glad to do it because I really needed to not concentrate on upcoming training with Ruuel.

I may as well have been fourteen and going on my first date, I was so keyed up. Since Fourth Squad’s on the next shift from mine, my Sights training is scheduled for late afternoon for me, and first thing in the morning for Ruuel. It’s so hard to be sensible about getting to see him. I ended up taking a needle-cold shower to distract me from the waiting, and filled in the last of the time brushing my hair a few thousand strokes and braiding it into a French braid so that I could at least look all efficient and businesslike.

The area where I was supposed to meet him was a new one to me, a series of rooms off a single corridor, all with observation windows. Sights Training. I was booked in room five, but was distracted by room three, which had two Kalrani weaving their way through it. It was a kind of obstacle course, but with moving sections. I can only suppose it helps train Combat Sight. Suitably padded, but I bet it was no fun being hit by swinging beams – let alone falling to the ground from the more aerial parts. I can only hope that none of my training ever takes me into such a room, because the gymnastic expertise required looks to be Olympic level.

I’d been watching a couple of minutes when Ruuel arrived, standing to my right and just a little behind. I’d been having grim and dramatic thoughts about the reasons the Kalrani were pushing themselves so hard and asked: "How many have died in training?"

"Five. Put this on."

He looked like he was in a bad mood, which was not the way to make me look forward to the session. Ruuel with his eyes nearly shut is best avoided, especially when he hands you a blindfold by way of greeting. Nanoliquid too, so that when I reluctantly held it up to my eyes and touched the ends together it oozed under my fingers, then flowed down to cover my ears as well. Yuck. It was extremely effective, and very disorienting. All I could hear was my heartbeat, and I could see nothing at all.

"Your interface will be reduced to minimal function during testing," he said in text, and immediately cut it back so I couldn’t do anything at all. Then I was levitated off my feet and moved. It was hugely disconcerting. I’d come to expect brevity from Ruuel, but this made me feel way too powerless, especially when I wasn’t put down, but kept floating in the air. All I could see was blackness, and a square text box floating in front of me which said: "Test 1" and the date.

It changed to: "You will be given a series of containers. Attempt to divine the contents of each container. If you cannot make a clear identification of the content of the container, use the first word or image which came to mind when you touched the container. Responses are to be verbal. Signal that you understand."

"…understood," I said, making an effort not to show I was annoyed. After all, sensory deprivation was logical in the context. I lifted my hands up obligingly, and something cool and round dropped in them: it felt like a glass ball, about softball size.

The first word which came into my head was softball, which is not a kind of ball I’ve seen on Tare and obviously wrong and related more to the container than the contents. I was shuffling through all the random other words which came after that when it occurred to me that I didn’t feel like I was with Ruuel. Now, I feel a lot of different things when I’m with Ruuel – right then I was pissed at him, with a touch of fretting about embarrassing myself and lowering his opinion of me – but there’s simply a level of him being present which I’m always very aware of. Or absent, as when I wake up each morning knowing he’s not there. Today he was standing beside me, and I’d put the blindfold on, and been lifted up, and after that I hadn’t really felt like I was with him. I could tell that I was moving; even a blindfold and earplugs can’t disguise the sense of being moved, of travelling maybe thirty or fifty metres. I’d assumed it was Ruuel levitating me, but it was obviously someone else.

It’s a good thing those containers weren’t fragile because I squeezed that first one violently. I felt like the butt of a practical joke, with everyone laughing at me secretly and waiting for me to twig. But after a few seconds of silent temper I turned my attention to who it was if it wasn’t Ruuel. I could sort of tell where they were, a fact that I found very interesting, and which went a long way toward distracting me from being angry. Not within reach, and a little below me – I guess I was floating higher in the air than I’d expected. And it was Par, felt like Par. There didn’t seem to be anyone really close, but the more I concentrated on Par, the more I had the impression that there were people at a distance, but out of reach like a word you know you know but can’t quite remember.

It had been a long time since I’d been given the container. I made a genuine effort to try to divine what was inside, but couldn’t tell if it was working or not. I didn’t have any kind of certainty, nothing like knowing Ruuel wasn’t there.

Finally I gave up and said: "Is test to try and guess object, or to see if I can tell that Auron has kidnapped me?"

"Both observations are relevant. Continue the container test."

I hadn’t recovered from being annoyed, so decided to be very literal in following instructions and said: "Softball," and held it out.

There was a slight pause, then the container lifted out of my hands and another one the same size and shape replaced it.

I kept my responses strictly to English after that. I don’t think in Taren, after all, and if they wanted the first word that came into my head they were going to get it. I’m not sure how much Symbol Sight would assist in interpreting my answers: things like "Daffodil" or "McDonalds" or "Stefani". I did censor myself a few times, when I went through a spate of sex terms which there was no way I was going to risk to Symbol Sight or possibly being asked to translate it later. Most of my answers I knew had to be wrong, because there was no way an elephant would fit in a globe the size of a softball.

After a couple of dozen globes, the interface switched to saying: "Test 2", then: "Describe your surroundings, including all objects and persons."

I thought it over. I expected I was in Sight Training Room 5, but I hadn’t actually seen it. Although it was probably as bland and white-walled as practically everywhere in KOTIS, saying that would be an assumption. The only thing I was really sure of was people.

"Auron is down there," I said, moving an open-palmed hand toward him. "There are four – five? – people over there." I indicated what was probably the direction of the corridor, but I wasn’t entirely certain about that. "One person over there?" I pointed to my right, feeling a bit uncertain. Whoever it was was moving about. "Everything else just guess."

After a moment, the floor came back below my feet – Par had lowered me to the ground. I managed not to stagger and was feeling pleased about that, then had another message: "Test 3. Identify and track the location of room occupants."

Par began to move around the room and I pointed to him as he did. If he went too fast I would lose track of him, and if he kept moving quickly I’d lose him altogether and only know that he was near. Then one of the group of five came closer and turned out to be Glade. He and Par stood together a moment, then split up, but I had no trouble telling them apart so long as they didn’t move too quickly.

A third person came in. I could track them just as distinctly, but didn’t know who it was. The fourth person, I almost missed. It was a lot harder to tell she was there, but I eventually recognised her as Ista Chemie.

All this time I’d been working on a headache, which grew steadily worse until it was at Ddura-level pounding, and I was thoroughly relieved when the next message was: "Test session concluded." I straight away lifted my hands to my head, trying to figure out how to take the blindfold off, but the nanocloth was smooth and unresponsive to my touch, then abruptly melted back into a single strip. Not designed to be removed by the wearer, which made me like it even less. My interface functions were restored a moment later.

The person I hadn’t been able to identify was a Kalrani, someone I hadn’t met. I could make that much out while squinting through my headache and sudden exposure to light. Ruuel said in text over the interface: "Report to medical. If they clear you, practice sensing your surroundings before the next session, but do not push yourself."

Par very kindly levitated me down to the medical section, and I only had to wait through the shortest of scans before Ista Chemie gave me something for my headache. I fell asleep there, but didn’t dream, and Zee came and collected me for a quiet dinner in her quarters. I told her I felt even sorrier for the Kalrani and Setari if they had to keep giving themselves headaches when they were only little kids. She said the first few times are usually the worst – it sounds like it works a bit like having your ears pierced – when you start using talents actively, pushing them beyond a passive state, it opens pathways, but repetition strengthens rather than continuing to hurt.

I had a long bubble bath after dinner, and let the water get cold thinking about myself. Not the weirdness of being this touchstone-psychic-mysterious whatever. To tell the truth, I think staying on Muina turned me psychic. Maybe it’s something in the pears. I sure as hell couldn’t do any of this before I got stuck there. No, during my bath I was trying to remember if I used to hate surprises. I don’t think I did. No-one’s keen on unpleasant stuff being sprung on them, but these days I just hate it if anyone does something without warning me. Really hate it.

It’s hard to believe Ruuel had forgotten the psychological aspects. He’s far too sharp to not understand that blinding me and then switching places with Par would leave me confused and vulnerable. I’m sure it helped with the test, pushing me into a more sensitive state, and really it was logical and not something I should make a fuss over. But it made me so angry.

I’m telling myself it’s a good thing, though. I’m an assignment to Ruuel, and I had an unhealthy level of faith in him. Maybe over the next week he’ll keep pissing me off, and I’ll end up thinking him on par with that ass Kajal.

Well, okay, that’s not very likely. But I don’t even want to listen to him telling me to think of otters now, and I would never have guessed that I’d feel that way.

Monday, June 2

Second in Command

So last night I dreamed I was arguing with Ruuel. He was being very cold and cutting, saying things about how worthless my trust is if it takes such a small thing to shatter it. I was saying that trusting someone was like being a little bit pregnant. You either are or you aren’t. You either trust or you don’t.

It wasn’t as bad as the tentacle nightmare. I kept waking up, instead of being unable to, and was just unhappy rather than nearly having a heart attack, but I could do without having dreams like that. When I woke the last time I had an email from Selkie with the draft report from yesterday’s session linked and instructions to fill in translations of what I’d been saying for my object identification attempts. I’m not entirely sure if this means it was Selkie conducting the testing session, or if he was just reviewing the report, but how much difference would it make if Ruuel was playing tricks on me under orders? It doesn’t make me feel any better about it. I filled in the report results, unsurprised to discover that I’d been wrong for every single one of them. Reading the rest of the report didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already concluded about my ability to know who is near me, but I did discover that part of the test had involved Glade and Par feinting blows at me to see if I reacted to that. I’m going to end up not wanting to be around all of Fourth Squad at this rate.

I was feeling very down and tired-eyed when I went for my first session of weapons training. The greensuit in charge of my training, Drake, looked like a poster-boy drill sergeant: fortyish, world-weary, no-nonsense. I started out half-expecting him to yell at me, but he was carefully correct and just a trifle indulgent – I bet he’d be the type of guy who calls women "Little Lady" back on Earth. The weapon he was training me with today was some kind of laser pistol, and I was hopeless with it. It’s got to be the easiest gun in the world to use, but while I was okay (not dreadfully accurate, but okay) with shooting big, unmoving targets, as soon as he started me on moving or pop-up targets (all generated by the interface), I rarely hit anything. I’ve never had very good aim with ball sports and the like. Plus – maybe it’s an Australian thing – but it just felt wrong having a gun. I’ve never even touched one before, and I’m too convinced I’ll accidentally shoot someone.

After seeing how useless I am, Drake booked me in for more practice sessions, but since I don’t think he expected me to be any good at it in the first place, he was all very relaxed about it. There’s some other weapon he has to train me in as well called a pulse, which is what we’ll focus on in the next training session. I guess all I can do about this is practice a lot.

I had a relatively light exercise session with Mara after lunch, weights and resistance. The gym’s one of the few places you see Setari out of uniform – well, in a training uniform which is basically shorts and a Singlet. They also use a light-weight outfit when doing combat training which doesn’t involve weapons. There were quite a few people in the gym today, and I found it very distracting that they weren’t dressed in form-fitting black. None of the Setari are body-builder muscular – they work out for strength but not mass and I gather too much muscle impedes agility. Mara could tell I was down, I think, but since I like being with her I cheered up a bit, and then Lohn came and joined us and he can always make me smile so it was an okay afternoon.

I ended up going to the Sights training area early, mainly because I think if I hadn’t I would have given in to the temptation to wear one of my lab rat shirts. I was still annoyed and distrustful, but I didn’t want to make a big fuss over what everyone else probably thought was nothing. Nor did I want to start a fight with Ruuel, or spend my time sulking or having tantrums. At the same time, I didn’t want to be made to feel like that again, and I figured I’d have a better chance of avoiding it if I took a proactive, rational approach. The session was booked for Room 6 this time, a smaller room with a few brown square things scattered randomly about which I decided were some kind of blockish, backless chair. I sat cross-legged on one, listening to music until he showed up, also very early.

As soon as he came in I said: "If have to be blindfolded, can I have one I can take off myself? Really didn’t like that thing yesterday."

"There’s no need," he said. "This session is training, not testing."

I was relieved, but couldn’t quite relax, and tried not to look obviously nervous as he made one of the squares slide across so it was opposite mine. He sat, one foot hooked under the opposite knee, relaxed like someone who’d never even thought about being in a bad mood.

"These are visualisation exercises," he said. "They are designed for attempting to pre-select which dreams you have, rather than changing the course of a dream you wish to escape. There are techniques for that, but these are a first step. You succeeded with the otters?"

I nodded, and he went on to explain the different things you could think when you were trying to get to sleep. It was a bit like counting sheep, really. Think of the details of a safe place. Construct something you liked, piece by piece. Follow a familiar routine. Do something which step-by-step focuses your mind on a particular thing, so that other things, like tentacles, don’t slip in.

As I’d expected, Ruuel was a good teacher, giving examples of each of the techniques in a clear and really quite evocative way. He told me to try a different one each night, and use the most effective ones, even when I hadn’t been stressed or suffering from nightmares. An entirely non-annoying session but, even though he did nothing but talk, I stayed tense and wary the entire time, not able to convince myself that there wouldn’t be some test or trick, and struggling not to dwell too much on how I felt yesterday.

I let out a little relieved breath when he told me that was enough for the day, which I should have known better than to think he wouldn’t notice. Probably he’d had a fair idea all along how I was feeling, but that made his eyebrows draw together slightly.

"Your dreams are too potentially destructive for you to not fully engage with this," he said, going into extra-captainly captain mode. "While I did not agree with the approach to yesterday’s testing, I did carry it out. If that isn’t possible for you to overcome, I can arrange for another person to oversee your training."

I’d hate to get into a real argument with Ruuel – I get the feeling I’d be outmanoeuvred at every turn. As it was, I felt my face burn, but I managed to meet his eyes steadily. "What was making me upset supposed to achieve?"

"Stress is a primary trigger to talent development." He was channelling his inner humourless robot, with no hint of expression. "In your case it mixes very badly with how you came to be here, and why you choose to tolerate being used by us. Do you want me to arrange for a different trainer?"

"Would they be more likely to disobey orders than you?" I asked, and was glad my voice was dry instead of hurt. Then I shook my head and stood up. "No. But thanks for the offer."

I left, needing to think about how I felt, somewhere away from Ruuel and all his Sights. I still haven’t decided, really, other than to know I was happier for the explanation. For Ruuel that probably passes as an apology, too, and I wonder if that was the reason he’d seemed in such a bad mood: knowing that playing games with me would make me angry, and yet told to do it anyway.

I thought Selkie understood me better, too…and I just looked up his schedule, and saw that he’d been away on Muina again, and arrived back a few hours before he emailed me the report to complete.

Ah well – hopefully I won’t have dreams about arguing with Ruuel tonight. If my visualisation works properly, I should dream about being in my room, cleaning it up. I’m kind of looking forward to that.

Tuesday, June 3

One Thousand Cranes

It occurred to me before going to bed last night that trying to dream about home was probably not a good idea. I really don’t want to end up in Earth’s near-space needing to be rescued. The otters really are the ideal safe place visualisation for me, but I either have to disassociate it with Ruuel, or fully get over being upset with him before I use it again.

I decided to go with the think of making something example, and went to sleep remembering Noriko Yamada teaching me how to make origami cranes. She was making a thousand of them, which she sewed onto long strings and was going to give as a present to her grandmother. I didn’t make that many, but I remember the pattern well, and so I curled up in my window seat and thought through the steps of making origami cranes, and I had a dream about the day I met Noriko in the library at school, and made cranes over lunch.

After a while, Mori and Ruuel came and stood down by the far end of the table, but then Ruuel went away again almost immediately. I made cranes and listened to Noriko telling me about how the strings of cranes would be strung up in her grandmother’s garden and as they fell to pieces they’d take the wish she made for her grandmother on the wind.

Then Ruuel and Taarel came in together, standing by my chair. "Do you want me to show you how to make one?" I asked Ruuel, handing him the crane I’d just made.

He held it up for Taarel to look at, and she touched a wing and said: "Impressive. Caszandra, do you know where you are?"

"The library?" I looked around, but started to think at the same time and said: "Oh, I’m dreaming," and woke up, still curled on my window seat. The lights were on, about three-quarter strength, and Mori was standing watching me. "But it wasn’t a nightmare," I said.

"No. You were pouring out energy at an excessive rate, and that triggered the alert." She perched on one arm of one my couches. "What were you dreaming about?"

"Doing one of the sleeping exercises, making things." I sat up and looked around the room, surprised Ruuel and Taarel weren’t there, because they’d felt very real to me. "Kind of have a headache," I said, finding that movement didn’t agree with me much.

"We’ll head down to medical in a minute. Just waiting on the captains to return."

"Ruuel and Taarel were here then?" I actually found their absence very disorienting, and my head pounded more as I tried to reconcile them talking to me and then not being there.

She smiled. "They went into the Ena, to this point in near-space, to follow a theory. They shouldn’t be long."

I went and dressed, since even though I’d added long pyjama pants to my nightwear after my excursion to Earth, I still felt at a disadvantage dressed for bed when people came to talk to me, or when I had to go to medical.

Mori was watching the rain pounding steadily down outside the window. "What was the theory?" I asked her, but she said it would probably save repetition to wait till the captains were back, and instead we chatted about the last The Hidden War episode, and I found myself explaining a little about how I felt about hurting Nenna. Mori was in great agreement with this, and said that the main fear of practically every Setari was letting their squad down and getting them killed. Then Taarel brought me and Mori into a channel with her, Ruuel, Selkie and (to my mild pleasure) Isten Notra.

"This is the location in near-space," Ruuel said, and gave us a fragment of his own log, a rapid ascent up the outer wall of the KOTIS facility, Taarel just visible in peripheral vision, and then something very odd ahead – a swirling blurriness centred around the outlines of a building apparently poking out the whitestone wall. I recognised it immediately. My school library building.

It didn’t have the sketchy quality of near-space – there were no holes in the walls – but there was a soap-bubble intangibility about it, like it was a mirage which would pop if you touched it. Still, Ruuel and Taarel had to push open the heavy swing door to get inside. There was a suggestion of a library assistant behind the front counter, but she didn’t seem to see them, and they turned right and went past long rows of shelves to the tables at the back of the main room, where a ghost of me was sitting with a ghost of Noriko, folding origami cranes.

There were two me’s. One sitting there folding cranes, and a glowing outline of me in roughly the same spot, curled up in my window seat. Ruuel and Taarel had to detour slightly to get inside the Taren near-space room as well as the library room, and Ruuel did a lot of Sight-switching, which really didn’t help my headache.

"Do you want me to show you how to make one?" the ghost me asked Ruuel, handing him one of the cranes.

He switched through his Sights again, and held it up for Taarel to look at, and she touched a wing and said: "Impressive. Caszandra, do you know where you are?"

"The library?" The ghost me looked around, then said: "Oh, I’m dreaming," and then the whole thing vanished and Ruuel and Taarel were standing alone in the near-space version of my apartment, looking at a faint afterimage of the sleeping me fading away, and a dozen origami cranes scattered across the floor.

The log extract ended and I opened my eyes to find Taarel and Ruuel had arrived, each holding a handful of cranes of all different colours, some patterned like the fancy paper Noriko had been using.

"What do the paper birds represent?" Isten Notra asked.

"A wish of good luck," I said, closing my eyes again because my head was pounding. "Noriko, the girl who was with me, is from a part of Earth called Japan. They have an art form there called origami: making things out of folded paper. The bird is called a crane, which is considered a kind of magical beast in Japan. Japanese tradition to fold a thousand origami cranes, as a luck-wish." I opened my eyes again, and since Taarel was within reach I leaned forward and took one of the cranes she was holding, and unfolded it. "It feels like ordinary paper," I said.

"Analysis will tell us more on that level," Isten Notra said. "Caszandra, we’re going to place a drone in near-space at the location of your room to monitor the development of your dreams on the Ena." Before I could be more than totally horrified she went on: "The visual component will be locked to my viewing only, unless I deem there to be some critical value in releasing it further, and otherwise deleted after my review. Is that acceptable to you?"

I couldn’t hide the DO NOT WANT on my face, and there was a long, painful pause before I could say: "I guess," sounding anything but happy about it. The idea of anyone watching my dreams is beyond awful. But that it would be Isten Notra made it just, just bearable, so I added: "Yes."

"Good girl."

"Medical now," Ruuel said, and I was dropped out of the channel. He gave Mori his handful of origami cranes, and waited to see whether I was going to walk myself or needed to be carted about. I managed to walk, just a bit slow and wobbly, but getting to medical mainly involves elevators anyway.

"Do you sleep there because of the window, or because you’re frightened of the other room?" Ruuel asked, just before we reached my home away from home.

"Both," I said shortly, knowing it would be useless to lie to him. "Getting better about going into the bedroom though." I no longer had to nerve myself up to fetch my clothes, at least.

He didn’t comment. Ruuel’s good at knowing when to shut up, and he left me to the familiar routine of having my brain scanned and mapped to the last neuron.

I don’t seem to have dreamed at all the rest of my sleep shift – no doubt Ista Chemie was privately relieved about that – and was collected by Maze this morning.

"You’re having fewer unbroken nights," he said, after we’d settled in the canteen over breakfast. "And I know you must be far from happy about this latest development."

"Would you want anyone watching your dreams?"

"Not for a moment," he said, so firmly I immediately wondered what he dreamed about. "I’m glad Isten Notra found an approach which is bearable for you, since it’s clear your talent development is accelerating. What you managed last night is well outside what we would call Ena manipulation, startling enough that the details are being kept within the squads working directly with you."

"Dream talent might be what a touchstone is?"

He nodded. "We haven’t found anything like you mentioned in any of the histories, but it’s becoming apparent that enhancement is the least of your talents. For the moment we’re going to concentrate on trying to understand more about what it is you’re doing, and helping you learn to not use it."

"Was easier just watching First Squad fight," I said, with a sigh. "Did you watch my shooting training session? So hopeless."

"You’ll improve with practice." He gave me a captain-look to underline that I better take the sessions seriously, but then couldn’t help but smile. "Though I concede that you’re not a natural fighter. It doesn’t sit well with me that we’re even considering you having a need for weapons training."

"Are there lots arguments?"

"Little but. For the most part over timing, about how urgently we move forward on Muina. I can’t pretend that there isn’t a huge amount of pressure to find a way to the city you visited."

"I get to say I told you so?"

"Perhaps. The argument isn’t settled yet." He studied my face. "You’ve had a run of difficult weeks, Caszandra. I can push to delay the decision, give you more time–"

"Would rather get it over with," I said, feeling oddly cross and embarrassed. "Don’t want to do it at all, but Ionoth numbers still increasing, yes? Thought of someone I know dying more horrible than standing on platform. And won’t have to worry about it once it’s done, can go back to being enhancing stray."

"I’m not sure that’s possible," he said, seriously. "What you did last night is something with wide-reaching implications, and it can’t be left uninvestigated. Fortunately the tie to the Ena brings you into Isten Notra’s domain. Now that Notra has assumed direct control we should be able to be more consistent with you, and avoid idiocies like subjecting you to one of the standard Sights tests." He made an exasperated face, then waved a hand to dismiss that train of thought, adding: "Today we’re going to take you into the Ena to see whether you can directly manipulate it."

So instead of having Sight training with Ruuel, I spent the rest of the day with First Squad. Ketzaren tried, completely unsuccessfully, to teach me to do the most basic Ena manipulation while Alay guarded us and the rest of First Squad cleared whatever space we happened to be in. They did what they considered basic spaces – what apparently is called a scatter rotation because they don’t follow a string of joined spaces, but keep going in and out of near-space. I’ve been given some Ena manipulation homework, with a little cube smaller than a fingernail which I have to will into being green instead of yellow. Changing colour is apparently one of the easiest things to do, but I feel a complete idiot glowering at a little cube while nothing happens.

And I have very particular orders from Maze not to do making things visualisations tonight. I should really do my otters safe place, but I don’t want to risk anything Ruuel-related. Even if it’s only Isten Notra watching, I know the only real secret is one you keep yourself.

Wednesday, June 4

Do Androids Dream?

I dreamed of counting sheep. It was a real dream, but didn’t last long enough that people had to come stop me from exhausting myself. While it felt very real – me sitting in the grass on a beautiful sunny day watching these hairy sheep leap over a fence barely bigger than their knees – counting sheep is such a sleep-related thing that I just knew that I must be dreaming.

And there was a drone there, lurking incongruously in the middle of a bush. I found this funny and annoying at the same time, and I waved at it when I noticed it, but for some reason it made me wake up. No headache, and I feel calm and rested, which I’m very glad about. I’ve hated these days of feeling like I’m barely keeping it together.

My morning appointment had changed to breakfast/dinner with Isten Notra, which was a nice surprise and turned into a fun outing. She lives in a residential section where some of the more important people who work at KOTIS live. It seems to be the equivalent of a gated community and the important thing to me was that it counts as within KOTIS' security and I could go there without an escort. Very cool. I almost didn’t arrive on time because I was busy gaping at gardens, and a little café/milk bar that I so wanted to go and buy something from all by myself.

I’m a sad case.

People did recognise me and stare – even in KOTIS few outside the Setari and the medical staff ever see me – but no-one made any move to stop or question me, and I found Isten Notra’s home easily enough. It was off a wide, high-ceiling plaza area, which made it feel more like a house to me. No windows, though, which I will always find eternally strange. Apartments on Tare don’t have doorbells: you use the interface to tell the door you’re there and it lets the person you’re there to meet know you’re waiting, or just alerts everyone in the apartment. I stood outside feeling incredibly conspicuous until the door was opened by a girl a few years younger than me who started to say something, stopped, and stared in disbelief.

"Isten Notra lives here?" I asked, then paused while another girl, maybe eleven or twelve, came to the door as well, took one look at me, and shrieked.

I swear, I’m starting to want to go back to Earth solely so people don’t react to me like that. It’s seriously embarrassing. Both me and the older girl went very red, and I tried to say something, but the younger girl shrieked again, pointing at me. The older girl hastily stepped back, gesturing me inside so she could shut the door.

"Kanna, stop it you idiot," she hissed, shaking her sister by the shoulder. "I’m sorry, um, I’ll – Kanna didn’t–"

"Jor, Kanna, what in the spaces are you–" A guy around my age appeared in the foyer, blinked twice, but managed to neither shriek or be lost for words. "You must be here to see my grandmother," he said. "I’ll take you through, but first let me apologise for my sisters. I’d say they’re not usually like this, but that wouldn’t be entirely honest."

"Shon!" The older girl looked even more embarrassed. The younger girl kicked him in the ankle, but he ignored her and led me further into the apartment.

It was a big place, really nice and comfortably cluttered – Isten Notra lives with her daughter Keel, Keel’s husband Fellan, and their children, Shon, Jor and Kanna. She’d told them she was expecting a guest for dinner, but hadn’t told them who. I gather Isten Notra likes to keep them on their toes. They were having pancake/crepe things for dinner, and so it worked as well for breakfast for me.

Unsurprisingly, they were all formidably smart. We ended up talking about Earth’s space program, about moons and different sorts of planets – they were really interested in Earth’s tilt giving us seasons and how that didn’t apply to Tare or Kolar, but obviously did for Muina – and then we talked about Mars and Earth science and as usual I wished I’d paid more attention at school, but I didn’t make too big an idiot of myself. I wish I’d read more hard science fiction as well as space opera novels, though.

After dinner, and a very yummy gooey toffee dessert which is not precisely what I should be eating for breakfast, Isten Notra asked me if I’d show them how to make origami cranes and so we had an origami session – I can make cranes and a cup and the chatterbox game and paper airplanes and a turtle, which is the most complex thing Noriko taught me. Isten Notra had had a large supply of paper brought to her in preparation, but she didn’t have a single pen in the house, and none of them could write anyway, so I couldn’t quite explain the chatterbox game properly until one of Isten Notra’s minions turned up with a pen. I bet he loved discovering why he’d been sent urgently to find an anachronistic holdover from the pre-interface age, but Kanna adored the chatterbox and had me write several up for her full of the kind of responses an eleven year-old imp thinks is funny, in my slightly strange-looking written Taren (I can write in the Taren alphabet if I concentrate, but I can’t write neatly enough to make it look precisely like the standardised letters).

I’d been at the Notra apartment for nearly three hours when Isten Notra dismissed her grandchildren and took me up to her office to talk about what the drone had recorded of my dream last night. I had been projecting into the Ena again, though less strongly it seems, and I didn’t make any permanent sheep, unlike my cranes, a dragon-patterned one of which was in Isten Notra’s office. She showed me the visual recording, of a mirage-like image of me sitting in nebulous grass watching sheep, and also the white outline of me sleeping in my window seat. A little after I waved at the drone, the whole thing faded away. I explained counting sheep to Isten Notra, and said yes, I had been aware that the drone was there and described what it had looked like to me.

"We are still at the very theoretical stage with this, Caszandra," she said. "I can tell you this is not Ena manipulation. It does not give the same readings at all. My best initial evaluation is that, at least temporarily, you are creating something resembling a space."

That was far more than I’d realised, and I didn’t like the thought of it. "Am I likely to get much stronger? Make permanent spaces?"

"Unlikely. While you are still at the beginning of your development, and these cranes of yours demonstrate you are already capable of producing small, simple objects, the energy required to make a permanent space – you simply aren’t physically capable of producing such power. Though I would recommend that you vary what you focus on during sleep as much as possible, as there is a possibility that repetition might achieve what you cannot in a single burst." She tucked a stray curl of white hair behind one ear, and shook her head. "We are only beginning to understand you. The drone has been running scans on the barrier between this space and the near-space around your room, but it shows no sign that your dreams have caused it to weaken. Yet your dream of the Array massive produced audible sounds and even physical reactions among the technicians who were in this space. That is a dangerous possibility. That you are capable of producing a thin version of a space is a thing of curiosity with interesting possibilities. But the implications of you causing effects in real-space, that is something else altogether. Not least because you are terribly at risk of injuring yourself."

Isten Notra sent me off with Shon as an escort, which I thought unnecessary until I noticed how many people were lurking about the streets back to KOTIS proper. Not huge crowds – the general public can’t come into the area without a pass – but far more than there’d been when I’d arrived. I could see that Shon had noticed them, but he chattered on blithely about exploration on Muina, which made me feel less uncomfortable. Shon’s very torn between the work his grandmother has pioneered in Ena studies, and natural sciences. He’s David Attenborough at heart.

He also asked if he could email me, if I was willing to talk about the comparisons between Earth’s and Muina’s wildlife, and left with a wave when we reached the entrance of KOTIS proper. A nice guy, very relaxed and on top of things. I have a faint suspicion Isten Notra was indulging in some matchmaking, but I think I’ll pretend that hasn’t occurred to me. I liked Shon, but it’s easier not to think about romance at all right now. I figure if I can start waking up not missing Ruuel, I can start thinking about the possibility of other guys, but it’s pointless until that happens. Even when I was so upset about that testing session, I still woke up knowing he wasn’t there.

I had weapons training after lunch, which involved struggling into bulky grey chest armour. I felt like a Stormtrooper. Drake stood me in the middle of a practice room with actual physical targets in it and had me activate the chest armour, which briefly made an energy shield around me, and then let loose a sort of area effect concussion blast, sending the targets flying in pieces in all directions. It has two blasts, and then will slowly recharge. They’re relying on it, far more than any ability I might gain shooting blasters, to keep me safe. I hate it.

What if there was someone I didn’t see in range when I set it off? I kept thinking of all the terrible accidents I could cause, which made it hard to concentrate on my blaster practice. Drake kept me almost a full kasse practicing in the armour and while I did start to come closer to hitting stationary targets more consistently by the time he let me go, I still suck at moving objects, never notice anything that pops up behind me, and really am kind of sick of the whole exercise.

After that I took a long bath, and went down to the Sights training area early, intending to play my murder mystery game until Ruuel showed up. I’m liking the game more and more, and it helps me de-stress, but it’s amazingly huge so I only play it when I have a good wodge of unscheduled time. On the way to the small training room I couldn’t help but notice four female Kalrani gathered around the viewing window into the obstacle course area.

"–by far the best," one was saying. "Absolutely edible."

"If you like your meal ice-cold," another snorted. "You’re wasting your time anyway. You think you can compete with her?"

"People always say that," said a third. "But it’s all just rumour."

"Rumours don’t go on for years without some basis," the second said. "And–"

"It’s about time we got to drill," said the fourth, and I could tell from the way they all straightened and very carefully didn’t look around that she’d spotted me and told them I was there. They all headed off down the corridor, and I went to the observation window and looked down.

Ruuel and Taarel. Ruuel was wearing one of the horrid blindfolds, and Taarel was attacking him. Blind and deaf, and he could still avoid her attacks and hop about the moving obstacle course. He couldn’t quite counterattack swiftly enough to hit her, but it was a very near thing, and they both kept barely avoiding swinging bars and things which shot out of the walls at them. It all looked incredibly dangerous.

I watched for a minute, then went up to the roof. It was raining, but not too hard, and I stood in it for a while, then went and had a hot shower so I wouldn’t catch cold and get lectured. Then I went down and was exactly on time for my appointment so that Ruuel could step me through techniques for what he called release triggers. Every time you go to sleep you have to try and build into your dream something which reminds you that it’s a dream, and allows you to wake up. A door, or an alarm clock. He said I shouldn’t use the drone as a release because I wouldn’t always be sleeping somewhere there was a drone. I stayed really focused, and asked what few questions occurred to me, and he dismissed me quite quickly.

It’s not easy to hide things from Ruuel. But all this talk about visualisations and methods of focusing your mind has been very handy. All the time during today’s session I was counting. Listening to what he said and keeping count took a lot of effort, and lessened the amount of energy I could devote to feeling stupidly dejected. He at least didn’t act as if he could tell I was upset.

All along I’ve had a sense that he and Taarel are together. They make a great couple, really. And like the Kalrani said, who could compete with her? Even if you ignore little issues of our comparative looks, I’m someone who’s still afraid to sleep in her own bedroom. Someone who has to be babysat.

It’s stupid to be upset to hear someone say no more than I already knew – that people think they’re together, but aren’t sure. But I’ve spent the evening worrying about what I’m going to dream tonight, and stayed up incredibly late and can barely keep my eyes open. Being upset is one of the triggers for my nightmares. And even if Isten Notra is the first person reviewing what I dream, that’s no guarantee others won’t see it. And I can’t talk about it to anyone at all.

Which at least means I have a huge amount of motivation to get this release trigger thing absolutely right first time. I don’t think I’ve ever been so determined to do something in my life.

I’m going to do a counting dots visualisation. And every dot is going to have This is a dream written on it. And every dot will be a release trigger to get me out of the dream. And I will be in a room which is nothing but dots, and every one of them a release trigger. And I don’t care if I wake up a thousand times tonight, kicking myself out of my dreams: that’s the only thing I’m going to dream.

Ghost just showed up and got very annoyed with me for squeezing her so tightly.

Thursday, June 5

A short history of

I’m glad I’ve been told to go back to sheep. I did manage to dream of being surrounded by buttons saying "This is a dream". But they were all paintings of buttons. Corridor after corridor of paintings of buttons, and me wandering endlessly through them trying to find the right one to push. It was a long night of feeling exhausted and alone – and all the time feeling watched, though I couldn’t see the drone this time. I wasn’t scared, and obviously wasn’t churning out enough power to have anyone feel the need to come wake me up, but just because I didn’t give myself a heart attack didn’t mean I didn’t feel totally battered and done in by it all.

And woke missing Ruuel like hell, worse than ever. What is it going to take to stop me feeling this way about him?

At any rate, I had breakfast with Lohn and Mara, since I was supposed to be training with them before they went on rotation. I had to talk Mara out of sending me to medical, but I’m really glad we chatted since with them I find it easier to admit what a wuss I am, and how stressed I’d gotten about not wanting people to see my dreams. I guess it is kind of odd, since it was a private conversation with Lohn and Mara being made into television which had me so upset. Maybe it’s all the hugs which makes them easy to talk to.

One thing Lohn said really struck me – that if I can control what I dream about, being able to project my dreams in such intense detail is really an opportunity. I could show him what surfing looked like, for instance. That’s a nice idea, changing the drone from an intrusive spy to a handy recording device. The big problem is the presumption that I can manage anything resembling control, given how badly I failed last night.

We did some mild training, and grabbed a light mid-morning meal before First Squad went into rotation. Then I had weapons training, which being drained and tired really did not help with. Drake was very tolerant, which is one good thing about him having low expectations for me. After that, I went up to the roof, and admired the sheer blackness of the approaching thunderclouds while I tried to think up a way to tell Ruuel that maybe someone else should train me after all. It was hard to come up with a reason that didn’t sound wildly insulting, or underline that the problem was just that I was too emotionally messed up about him. I’d rather not have to deal with him at all for a while – not until I stop waking up knowing he’s not near me.

Everything I could come up with sounded so feeble, and I had just decided that I’d put off changing trainers till tomorrow when I felt someone standing to my left. The Nuran, Inisar.

"Hello again," I said, after a moment. I’m sure if anyone was paying attention to my vitals monitor they would have noticed a huge spike, but since he was just standing there, all I did was add: "Another rescue attempt, or something else this time?"

"Do you no longer choose to aid the Tarens?"

The question was so neutral I couldn’t tell if he was simply curious, or was ready to cart me off through the Rift as soon as I said yes. Or kill me if I didn’t.

"No." I stayed sitting down, though I had to lean back a little to look up at him. "Situation hasn’t gotten better. More Ionoth, more gates. Don’t see how I can walk away from that. I had a – well, I have lots of questions, but I particularly wanted to ask what Cruzatch are."

"What do you think they are?" he asked. Totally unhelpful.

"Muinans become Ionoth. Trying to make themselves immortal. Or into gods. Or both. And now trying to stop Tarens because Tarens reached the point where they can move about spaces and find Pillars and turn them off. Do the Cruzatch drive massives to attack Nurans too?"

"I have been forbidden to answer questions."

That made me feel nervous, since if he wasn’t here to talk, kidnapping or assassination moved up the list. "Just here to look at the scenery?"

His eyes – rather too like Ruuel’s for my comfort – considered me steadily. "I am commanded to observe your development as a touchstone. While I am here I am to avoid all contact with any of the lost children of Muina."

The rules-lawyering made me smile. He wasn’t quite answering my questions, and he wasn’t talking to a Muinan-descendant. "Following instructions very exactly. I don’t know which bits of what’s happening to me are the touchstone part, but just lately I’ve started projecting my dreams into the Ena. If that’s what being a touchstone is, would appreciate a few hints as to how not to have dreams. Or at least stop half-killing myself with them."

"Control is not a thing gained during sleep," he said, and handed me a book. I glanced down at it, very surprised, and when I looked up again he was gone.

"Straight answers not a thing gained from Nurans," I muttered, and sighed, then looked with extreme interest at the book.

It was handmade, the paper creamy and lightly textured, with firmly sewn bindings forming a thick solid edge. The covers were plain wooden boards, fine and undecorated. The whole thing looked newly made, and when I opened it the writing was dark and cleanly written. And in Old Muinan, which I have as much chance of reading and understanding as Old English. I snorted, but carefully went through it page by page, committing them to my log – and hoping for useful illustrations.

Then it was time to face the music. I’d already checked on my captains, but Maze was still on rotation and Ruuel was asleep. I tossed up contacting Taarel or Grif Regan from Second Squad or even Zan, but decided to skip the preliminaries and emailed Selkie the conversation from my log, with a subject heading of "Nurans" and in the body: "Have neat handwriting." I cc’d the email to Maze, Ruuel and Isten Notra and then sat there trying to puzzle out what the damn thing was about. Not, as I’d hoped, "The Idiot’s Guide to Touchstones".

I’d just decided it was some kind of history of Muina when Isten Notra sent a channel request to me with the text: "You are an endless source of amusement," making me laugh.

"Hello," I said. "Suspect amusement is not word everyone will use."

"You may well be right. And how cruel of you to only send the first four pages with that log. Pass me the rest."

That was easily done – I’d already separated out the fragment for my own review. "Can you read Old Muinan, Isten Notra? This is Nuran history book?"

"More than that, child. It is a copy of an account written by a Lantaren just after arrival on Nuri. It is a compilation of everything the Muinans who fled to Nuri knew of the disaster and the events leading up to it. It is–" Her voice throbbed. "It is very exciting, and I will leave you now while I devour it. You’d best get yourself to Selkie’s office before he finishes reviewing your conversation."

I’d not been to Selkie’s office before – it was in a part of KOTIS I think of as Command Central. An area with lots of bluesuits walking about, and an excess of meeting rooms. I could tell when Selkie finished reviewing my log, because an appointment for a meeting with him appeared in my calendar, scheduled for immediately. But I guess Isten Notra had already told him I was on my way, because he simply waited for me to show.

Some offices on Tare have remnants of design from when Tarens used table-top computers, but most of them are like Selkie’s – just a meeting room assigned to a particular person, with storage space for equipment, but little to do with desks or paper shuffling. Selkie’s had a small rectangular coffee table thing, with four low chairs around it, and a taller café-type round table with two upright chairs with high backs (like wing-back chairs). He was in one of these, and didn’t look amused.

"Sit."

I put the book on the table and sat, feeling like I’d been called to the principal’s office. Except it was a school I couldn’t go home from at the end of the day. For psychic soldiers.

"I’ve spoken to you on the subject of your alert before," he said. "If I need to do so again, you will have a squad assigned to you permanently. Do you understand?"

Setting off my alert wouldn’t have made any difference if the Nuran had wanted to kill me, and I’d been all prepared to say that until I saw the look in Selkie’s eyes. Any argument, and he’d assign a squad to me straight away.

"Understood," I said, resigned to having to do it.

"What is the basis for your theory about the Cruzatch?"

"Arenrhon obviously about godhood or immortality. Bodies in the non-blurry sarcophagi were burnt. And Cruzatch keep showing up. Is just a guess – we don’t have anything like Cruzatch on Earth. Don’t think I’ve even heard any legends about things like that."

He didn’t comment, but didn’t look surprised, either. I was hardly the first to speculate on what the people at Arenrhon were trying to achieve.

"Remain here until Notra has reported on this," he said, picking up the book and leaving.

It wasn’t a short book, but I’m not altogether sure if having to sit in Selkie’s office for a couple of hours was supposed to be punishment, or just that Selkie wanted me somewhere he thought it hard for the Nuran to get to. I mused for a while on where the Nuran was going to sleep on a planet like Tare, where there was so little unoccupied land. Avoiding all contact with the descendants of Muina would be quite a task.

Not that he seemed to have had the least trouble finding me. If he had been sent to kill me, I’d be dead right now. I think in a way I’ve grown used to the idea of probably dying. That’s what spending so much time in intensive care does for you.

Selkie didn’t come back straight away, and I ended up playing one of the interface games I’d bought, caught up in the very curious world Tare had been before it had advanced so far technologically. Cave-dwellers, with their whitestone cities under a sky of stone, and thus with an outside they would go out to, of sorts. Ionoth were present, but far less of an issue, and there was not this obsession with the yet-to-be-formed Setari. Instead the focus was on sorties into the surrounding darkness of the caves, and tunnels leading to undiscovered parts. It was Tare’s Here Be Dragons stage, and really quite a different world.

When First Squad came back from rotation, Maze replied to my email with: "Urth person is asking for a lecture. I’ll see you shortly." But it was Ruuel, not Maze, who showed up first, walking in and sitting opposite me while I was preoccupied with a puzzle. I felt him there, and shut down the game, opening my eyes.

"The trigger technique was not successful?" he asked, presumably having spotted the huge circles under my eyes.

"Long nightmare about looking for triggers," I said, shrugging. "Will try the action variation tonight." That was where a particular action on your own part, like a hand signal, was the trigger to wake up. "Do you think Nuran was actually answering my question, or just being deeply annoying?"

He tilted his head slightly. "It is possible that your abilities are triggering during your dreams purely because you have no control over them waking. Have you been practicing sensing the location of those around you?"

I nodded, though it was not so much practising as I increasingly happened to know people were on the far sides of walls.

"When the Cruzatch first attacked you in Kalasa, did you sense it before you saw it?"

That was hard to answer. "Don’t really know. Don’t think I heard it, but something made me look up."

"We’ll try a visualisation exercise until Isten Notra is ready. Close your eyes."

I gave him a rather wry look, which he didn’t react to, and after a moment I obediently shut my eyes, despite knowing my face had gone red. And I was stupidly happy. It’s the feeling that I’m an annoyance to him – and the idea that he and Taarel are together – that bothers me. I’m still not pleased that he went along with upsetting me for the purposes of testing, but – yeah, I can’t pretend that that or even the high probability that he’s in love with Taarel cured me of wanting him.

For the visualisation exercise he described a room. High ceiling, Pillars, some low cushioned benches, and a whole bunch of square display cases with different things in them – old weapons and jars and jewellery. I had to hold a picture of what he was describing in my mind, and repeat it back to him with every thing he added. One of those memory games. I was surprised at how easy I found it. Ruuel describes things very vividly, and I could really see the room, so had no trouble repeating back the contents, but started to struggle with an increasing headache.

"This is making my head hurt," I said eventually, opened my eyes and then flinched because everything around me was blurry and seeing that felt like a needle going into my brain. Just faintly, I glimpsed the room he’d described, superimposed on Selkie’s office, but then I had to close my eyes and do rather a lot of head-clutching. Ruuel, after a little pause, moved me to another room and called a medic up to drug me to the point where the pain was pushed behind a wall, but didn’t really go away. I was very wan and shaky when Maze and Selkie arrived, but at least could open my eyes.

They’d ordered food, and eating did help me a little, but I mainly wanted a dark place to curl up in, and only half paid attention to Ruuel describing the results of the visualisation – not looking at the log file he shared at all – until he started pointing out details in the ghostly image overlaid on Selkie’s office which he hadn’t mentioned but which were in the museum he’d been describing. And something which he didn’t remember being there. Not to mention that the things he had described were exactly correct.

"We will obtain a current log of the museum for comparison," Selkie said. He paused a beat, then added to me: "Attempting to use this ability to see your own world would be crass stupidity."

Guess I’d been looking too obviously delighted. "Probably," I agreed, reluctantly. "Will stay away from trying to visualise Earth until have better idea of limits. Dream visualisation I had night before last of sheep was set on Muina though. And one with origami cranes was Earth building. Possibly all the energy isn’t in the looking but the reproducing."

"Either way, you will limit visualisations to controlled experiments until further notice. Knowledge of the expansion of these abilities remains restricted to the assigned squads. For the short term, the other events of today are wholly restricted, even within your squads."

He brought Isten Notra into channel with us then, and she gave us a very cheerful run-down of the content of the Nuran history.

"What this book primarily gives us is confirmation of certain assumptions, and a timeline, but also a few discoveries," she said. "The author was not directly involved in the creation of the Pillars, but details her memories of the project from the time it was first proposed by a group called House Dayen. The major revelation is that stabilising travel through deep-space was only a fortuitous additional benefit, while their primary goal was the aether, which was intended to power what is termed as great devices. There was considerable debate between the controlling houses regarding the risks, and it was the unexpected support of a House Zolen which saw the project move forward. The author notes that during the period of construction, House Zolen also built a number of insufferably proud underground dwellings, which is almost certainly a reference to the Arenrhon installation.

"The Pillars project was considered a resounding success until gates began to tear between real-space and near-space. Ionoth became an immediate issue, and after numerous attacks House Dayen created the Ddura using one of these great devices. The disaster followed only five days later. First, news of an attack by unknowns on House Dayen, swiftly followed by loss of contact with Kalasa. And reports were received from those within sight that a wound had appeared on Daman, which is one of the names for the Muinan moon.

"Nurioth and Teklata fell silent within hours of Kalasa. Most of what the author terms focus towns were not responding, but one reported that the platforms had ceased to work, and instead stung any who touched them. Those settlements still with mind-speakers shared what little knowledge they had, and there was considerable argument as to whether the Ddura were responsible, as the Ddura cannot access Kalasa, and that was the city which fell first. Within a day of Kalasa’s loss, as more and more voices fell silent, a decision was made to flee."

Isten Notra paused, then added: "What remains gives us some more detail on the methods used to access deep-space, and protect a sizeable town’s worth of refugees from the aether and Ionoth encountered."

"Thought aether came from platform towns, not deep-space," I said, finding that the more my headache receded, the harder it was to stay awake.

"Indeed," Isten Notra said. "Our observations have certainly shown that aether is generated on Muina. Whether all the aether encountered in the Ena is that same aether is yet to be ascertained."

"How much does this change?" Maze asked.

"In the short term, nothing. The information about the Arenrhon installation usefully establishes that it was not part of the Pillars project, but does not explain its actual purpose. Perhaps it is one of these great devices. But much of the book merely establishes a timeframe and order for information we already have."

"And leaves open the question of why this Inisar of Nuri has been forbidden to speak, yet chooses to pass this on," Ruuel said, and I thought this a fair point, but was too busy falling asleep to even hear the response.

I woke in my apartment – on the window seat, not in the bedroom, and all neatly tucked up. I’m guessing it was Maze who brought me back, but would he know I needed to sleep in the window seat at the moment?

Isten Notra had sent an email with the first few pages of the book translated, and I suppose that fact that they’re leaving the translation to her for the moment is a demonstration of the current level of secrecy. I guess that’s to protect Inisar, since there was a possibility the Nurans had spies on Tare. The history book becoming public knowledge would basically be a statement to the Nurans that Inisar had betrayed them. I find it more than uncomfortable to not be able to talk about this to the rest of First Squad or Fourth Squad, but I’ll make sure to keep my mouth shut.

I’ve been switched to the same shift as Fourth Squad, with all my appointments being weapons training in the morning and Sights training in the afternoons, with a little physical training wedged in between. And in another week it’s back to Muina, so it’s obvious they’ve decided to use me to find Kalasa. First, Second, Third and Fourth will all be part of the same mission.

Just now I’m more worried about six nights of coping with the problems in my head, than anything a whole week away on Muina.

Friday, June 6

Keszen Point Warehouse

No dreams last night. Nor yesterday after the meeting. Not that I can remember, anyway. I’m not quite ready to relax, but I’m starting to hope.

One thing about switching to the later shift is that I’m awake when The Hidden War premieres each week, although I’m not going to make the mistake of watching it with company again. Last night’s episode was mission-focused and action oriented, except for the last ten minutes or so when Nori, the main character, is called to a testing chamber and – along with the godly-good and lusted-after-by-everyone captain of Squad Emerald – tests the newly-discovered enhancement talents of the wide-eyed and kittenish stray. Then Nori was assigned to give the stray some basic combat training and baby-sit her.

I don’t think it’s a good thing to have a link made between Zan and the main character. Nori’s not her squad’s captain, and doesn’t look at all like Zan, but just like Zan (so far as I can tell) she’s painfully and secretly devoted to the godly-good and lusted-after-by-everyone senior captain. And I bet Zan’s going to get all sorts of smirky comments from that bitch Forel thanks to that. I debated contacting her, but I figure Zan was going to be taking a firm attitude of indifference toward anything on The Hidden War, and that there was no need to add my voice to the crowd. But I’ll make sure to try and chat with her in the next few days.

This morning’s shooting practice went much better, since I’d actually had some rest beforehand and wasn’t distracted by any imminent meltdown. I’m still terrible at knowing one of the targets is sneaking up behind me – since they’re not alive my brand-new people detector doesn’t help at all – but I’m getting better at remembering to check occasionally. I still miss moving targets 99% of the time.

I had lunch/dinner with Maze, who confirmed the reason why the Nuran’s book is so secret is not wanting to give away that he’d helped us. He doesn’t know how long it will be kept from the squads. Apparently Drake has given me a good report for overall improvement, and Maze wants me to focus on getting comfortable with the practice, to try and make shooting an automatic thing.

"Why didn’t you share your theories about the Cruzatch?" he asked toward the end of lunch.

I shrugged. "They nothing new. Couple people at Arenrhon saying almost same thing, and no way to confirm it. Don’t like it when total guesses mine given weight just because I say it. Asked Nuran because hoping he knew answer. Do you think that what they are?"

"My guess isn’t any better than yours," Maze said, and looked sad. Maze knows he’s not exactly impartial where Cruzatch are concerned, which is another reason I wasn’t keen to start making guesses.

I left to go meet Ruuel, intending to be early but miscalculating how long it would take to get there. Instead of a testing room, we were supposed to meet at Transport Platform 15, which turned out to be a train station deep underneath the island. Ruuel and Ista Chemie were waiting for me, and he started out with his usual terse briefing as we all boarded a lone train carriage.

"We’re travelling to Keszen Point, where we’ll be conducting testing for this week. For the next two days we’ll concentrate on similar visualisations to yesterday – testing whether you will react to a description of a place that is unknown to the person describing it, and how much detail you require. Two talents seem to be in play – the ability to see the place, and then reconstructing it using the Ena – but don’t concern yourself with separating the two immediately."

"Testing there because I might damage things?" I asked, and he nodded as the train started off. It was a very zippy one – I think the line might be used to shift freight swiftly around the underneath of the island. I looked Keszen Point up, and found it was an outlying rock off one side of Konna. A big boxy warehouse, with a few side rooms. It was cold and echoey, smelled of ocean and something acrid, and they had rearranged countless packing crates to the edges so that the entire centre was empty except for a couple of tables and chairs, and a scanning chair for me. There was another greysuit waiting – a gadgets type – and a man called Far Dara who I gathered was the person in charge of the warehouse, who I bet just loved having to turn it into a test facility for a week, but who hid his opinion well and was formally polite, showing us the few amenities of the place.

"Is it possible to go outside?" I asked, which seemed a simple request, but involved a lot of blank looks as to why I’d want to, and then checking the weather. But Tsa Dara was willing to show me, and Ruuel didn’t object. I had to talk Ista Chemie into coming: she was typically Taren about going outside and maybe she was justified in that given we had to put on a harness with attached safety ropes. Then it was a double-airlock kind of arrangement before we were out and attaching our safety ropes to a railing/fence thing which ran around the edge of the small bit of rock which wasn’t building.

It was the final hours of Tare’s long dusk and you couldn’t see much more than the outlines of the rocks we were standing on, and the shifting of the great waves almost to our height. But you could look up, and that was well worth it. High, black vertical rock, and then white city. I’d already known from my roof-visits that the whitestone wasn’t lit, except in one or two points, but it still caught what light there was. And it was so high, so monumental, so unlike Earth that it really reminded me that I was living on an alien planet.

I leaned over the railing and pressed my hand on the top of a waist-high rock, cold and slimy. "I’ve been on this planet for half an Earth year and this is the first time I’ve touched it," I said, discovering some furry green moss-like stuff on one slope of the rock. "But best I can tell, most Tarens haven’t even done this much. Is so strange for me to understand."

"Would the people of your world be so different?" Ista Chemie asked. I think being outside and looking up at Konna was a big thing for her – her voice was really strange.

"Hard to say how they’d be if they’d come to Tare like Muinans did. But if you transplanted population of Australia to Konna, every time the weather eased up enough not to be fatal, the roofs would be covered with people having picnics, and flying kites and hang-gliding and a few insane people base-jumping." I’d had to use English words, and laughed at how incomprehensible I must be. "In Australia, there’s a job called surf life-saver. Spend all day at the beach watching for drowning people."

This was really good timing for one of the waves smacking the rocks below to be extra-large, and to break over the ground we were standing on. It wasn’t enough to make any of us fall over, but Ruuel was abruptly a few millimetres away from me, a stabilising hand on my arm. He only said: "We’d best get started," and gestured for us to go back inside, but he hadn’t moved away before he spoke, and I stopped being all chatty and started hoping I could get my mind off those few moments of him being so close, of how I’d felt his voice as well as heard it. I really didn’t want to be projecting anything that was on my mind at that moment, and concentrated on thinking through the Taren alphabet backwards and things like that.

Ista Chemie was distracted by having shoes full of seawater, and Tsa Dara took her off to dry them. Nanosuits are so much better. I sat on the scan chair, and was glad of the other greysuit, who wanted to check the scanner’s calibration. From there it was all business, with Ruuel reading out piece by piece details of an indoor garden with fountains and stony artwork. The description wasn’t as well-done as when Ruuel used his own words, but it worked the same – and gave me another massive headache. Ruuel didn’t let me open my eyes as quickly this time, which meant the headache was worse and I was completely limp and exhausted afterwards. I managed to stay awake for the trip back, though, and ended up sleeping it off in medical because Ista Chemie wanted to monitor me more. No nightmares. Maybe, just maybe, these exercises are exactly the right thing to do to stop me having them.

But I woke from my post-testing nap really knowing Ruuel wasn’t there, and lay remembering his hand on my arm, the warmth of him, his breath just faintly stirring my hair.

I’m not succeeding at all in this getting over Ruuel thing.

Saturday, June 7

Echo of a wind chime

Since knowing Ruuel isn’t there is still my dominant sensation on waking, I’ve taken to lying in bed for a while each morning trying to sense his location. My range is expanding, but the Setari quarters – including my own – all have various levels of shielding on them, and till now I’ve only be able to feel people if they’re in the corridor on this or the next level up. This morning I knew Lohn was in his room, though, so it is possible for me to sense through their shielding.

And I can tell when Ghost is in my room, even when she’s invisible. Something I’ve no intention of admitting.

Today’s test was a fictional place, a magnificent underground hall with intricate and gorgeous murals on the walls and an incredible puzzle-pattern floor. Ruuel didn’t tell me it was fiction beforehand, and it took longer for me to get any kind of mental image of it, but it still worked, producing a lot more detail than Ruuel had read from the novel the test was based on. I didn’t get so immediate and overwhelming a headache the instant I opened my eyes this time, though the world went very blurry – two images overlaid on each other. The hall had an immense floor to ceiling wind chime, but no wind to blow it. Ruuel went over and touched it and it actually shifted in response.

There were people who came along as part of the room, though they hadn’t been in Ruuel’s description at all. Very grand and noble sorts, who didn’t seem able to measure their clothes, which were all hanging sleeves and trains and twice as much fabric as necessary. When Ruuel touched the wind chime, they all looked at him, which startled me enough that I stopped concentrating on maintaining the image – which was good because I really felt myself stop that time. Though I could have lived without the headache afterwards. It felt like someone had smacked a huge gong right behind my eyes, and I had to lie still until Ista Chemie’s medicking had taken the edge off.

"The scans are showing four distinct areas of brain activity," Ista Chemie said, while I was sipping one of the horrible restorative drinks she insists on giving me. "One only activates when you open your eyes while the others are in effect. Can you describe what you experience then?"

"Pain."

Ruuel gave me a captain-look, so I shrugged and added: "Two images overlaid, and a sense of…dissonance? It wasn’t too bad this time until you touched the wind-chime and they all looked at you."

Ruuel frowned, then said: "Reviewing log."

I’ll never get used to someone accessing the world through my eyes. Ruuel didn’t give much away, just stared into the distance abstractly for a minute, then said calmly: "The people weren’t visible to us. You’re seeing both the image in this world, and the one in the Ena. The drone set at this location in near-space should confirm that."

I got a bit quiet after that, thinking things over. On the trip back Ruuel told me that tomorrow we’d start attempting to find a way for me to separate the talents and gain some measure of conscious control of them. If I had been feeling particularly daring I would have asked him if he had had a lot of difficulty untangling six different sights, but I was busy feeling headachy and worried. I never did get around to telling him I thought I should swap teachers. Even though I get all sad and repressed around him at times, I feel reassured knowing that he has no trouble seeing right through me. Right now I need all those Sights to keep me going off the rails. And I figure I can feel sad about him and Taarel, but see him every day, or feel sad about him and Taarel, and miserable because I don’t get to see him at all.

Which is not what I’m worried about right now, but a useful distraction. I wish I wasn’t so tired, but don’t think I can keep myself awake any longer.

Sunday, June 8

Overwrought

I was getting ready for bed after yesterday’s session when Mori sent me a channel request. "Feel like some company?" she asked, when I opened the channel. "I’ve been given a firm suggestion that I might want to sleep on your couch tonight."

My first reaction was to resent the babysitting, to hate being thought of as this weak-ass neurotic liable to fall apart without hand-holding. I almost told Mori that I was fine, but the problem was that I wasn’t, so after an overlong silence I told her: "I think I’d be glad if you did."

"I’ll be down in a moment, then." She sounded pleased, so at least I didn’t have to feel she found being told to sleep on my couch annoying. And she was smart enough not to pretend that the idea was anything but an order, which is one of the things I like about Mori.

She brought a big, cushiony eiderdown with her, and was wearing a singlet, short-shorts and slippers – I’d love to know if anyone saw her in the elevator.

"You had a bad day, huh?" she said, plunking the eider on one of my couches. "I thought the testing was going well."

"I guess it is." I shifted from my window seat to the opposite couch, feeling embarrassed but stupidly relieved someone would be with me when I slept. "I just started thinking things through properly. The tests have been about places, rooms. Even though there was that whole horrible dream about the massive, it hadn’t occurred to me that I could make Ionoth that might attack Setari in near-space."

"Really? It’s the first thing I thought of. So you’re worried you’ll summon up something nasty?"

"Earth has some pretty scary stories." I could tell she didn’t understand, that she thought I was scared for myself. "It’s very annoying, because the more I tell myself not to worry, the more stressed I get about it. I never used to be like this."

I dimmed the lights back down, and told Mori about slumber parties. She told me about what it had been like for her when, at six, she was brought to Konna to be a Kalrani. During the early days, they’d been allowed to talk to their families as much as they wanted over the interface, and the training had focused mainly on physical education. Only the expansion of the interface network had been particularly distressing. After that, interface rights had slowly been pared back, and the training focused more on their talents.

Mori is glad that she became a Setari. She loves being in Fourth Squad, which is a very tight team, and really enjoys the exploration role, of being the first squad to go into a space. She’s excited by everything they’ve done on Muina, and is looking forward to getting into Kalasa. She fell asleep trying to explain how she felt.

It took me a while longer, carefully doing my visualisations – sheep again, because I find that safest. I don’t think I dreamed of sheep at all, dreamed instead of sleeping on the couch, comfortably aware of Mori curled up across from me. Right up until Mori suddenly leapt to her feet and sent a small bolt of lightning arcing across the room. She’s only a minor electricity talent, and while the thing she hit squealed and jerked, it didn’t go down. Lacking her nanosuit, she hoisted up my coffee table, swung it like an abortive hammer-toss, and threw it at the thing as it came at us.

Struggling out of my couch, I saw movement, started to yell a warning, but too late. A cat-sized purple-black bug hit her in the chest and she staggered backward as it hooked spindly legs around her arms and shoulders and stung her over and over. The first one hadn’t been stopped by the table and came toward us as Mori went down. I fixated on another bug climbing over the back of the couch I’d been sleeping on, but I knew that I was sleeping, that I’d made it happen, and reached frantically for the bit of my head I’d felt in the wind chime room.

And woke up, Mori standing over me, a hand on my shoulder. "I’m not sure I want to know what you were dreaming," she said.

There were fading red welts on her chin and throat. I stared at them, feeling sick, then said: "Let’s go to medical."

Mori was willing to go along with that, waiting for me to dress, then taking me with her up to her rooms so she could put on something over her bed-clothes. I could barely speak I was so upset, wanting to scream at her to hurry. When we finally got to medical and I insisted that she get scanned, telling the greysuits to look for a parasite in her chest, she was watching me with open concern, but told the greysuits to do as I said. And there was nothing, and I fainted.

I woke up in a scan-chair with three of the greysuits fussing over me trying to figure out why I’d passed out, and deciding eventually that it really was just relief. I’d only been unconscious a few minutes, but that had been enough time for one of the Setari to duck out into near-space to download the data recorded by my drone. After making certain I was no more than embarrassed, Mori brought me into a channel with Maze, Ruuel and Isten Notra.

"I’ll share the visual on this if you don’t mind, Caszandra," Isten Notra said, and linked the images recorded by the drone. I didn’t say anything, just watched it, flinching inside and feeling incredibly sick. "These creatures exist on your world?"

"Only in story I was reading before went to Muina. They lay eggs in people. Is it possible to remove a talent from someone? Do brain surgery?"

"It’s been done," Isten Notra said. "When the risk is judged great enough. Since your talent is unique, we would be extremely reluctant to go so far, especially when as yet you have not come anywhere close to the kind of power level you would need to produce Ionoth that endure."

"What you’re creating in real-space seems closer to a tangible illusion than actual substance," Maze added. "There’s no trace of it once you’ve stopped projecting."

"I don’t want to wait until I kill someone to find out whether it’s possible," I said, struggling not to sound as upset as I was. But my voice had gone high, and I had to swallow to make myself not shout.

"You’re overlooking the important point," Ruuel said, interface voice clipped and sure. "Unlike the dream of the Array massive, you were able to break out of this one. That after only a few days of training. You’re now aware when your dreams have taken on a tangible aspect?"

"…yes."

"Then your current exercise, whenever you find yourself dreaming in this way, is to break out of it, no matter if the dream is threatening or not. And in future remember that Eyse is a considerably better fighter than you give her credit for."

He dropped out of channel, leaving me feeling I’d been overreacting, which in retrospect was no doubt exactly what he’d intended. Maze and Isten Notra spoke to me a little longer, just a few questions about the training of the last few days, then told Mori to take me back to my room.

Mori was trying unsuccessfully not to look hugely gratified – outright compliments from Ruuel are rare and preciously hoarded by his squad. "Combat Sight would have told me if I’d had a thing like that in my chest," she told me as we rode the elevator. "Do you think you’ll be able to get back to sleep?"

"Maybe. I’ll have a shower and read for a while. Fourth is on rotation tomorrow, yes?"

"Yes – but broken nights are half the reason rotations aren’t scheduled for first thing."

Mori’s a lot better at getting to sleep than me, out of it by the time I was finished in the shower. Instead of reading, I reviewed various bits of my log, mainly time I’d spent alone at Pandora and Arenrhon. Scenery. I fell asleep and didn’t dream, and woke mid-morning to find my shooting practice cancelled and one of the extra-long and thorough medical checks put in its place. I sensibly took my diary down. I’ve arranged lunch with Zan, since I saw she was free, and then it’s training when Ruuel’s back from rotation.

Eggshells

After my meltdown yesterday, I wasn’t surprised when Maze came along for my test session, even though it finished around midnight in his day. I can just picture all the discussions they’re having on how to stop me going off the deep end.

Ruuel told me that today I had to try to use my talents separately – to see things without making them happen, to make things happen in the Ena and not in real-space, to make things happen in real-space but not in the Ena. He also said I should expect to fail. What I needed to focus on was becoming aware of the mechanism, concentrating on what I did.

He started out just describing an object, one which was found in many places, to see if I could consciously conjure something a little less over-the-top than an entire place. That worked. It took a lot longer to get an image of what he was describing, but wasn’t as exhausting, so this session lasted a lot longer than previous ones. I also ended up with less of a headache, which was nice, but the cumulative effect of several projections in a row left me semi-conscious.

"I’m pleased you haven’t given in to the temptation to try to create visions of your own world," Maze said on the trip back.

"Too tired of headaches to give myself more," I said, struggling to stay awake. "Besides, I think Tsur Selkie meant it about assigning a squad to me full-time. Think he’d put interesting far-sight experiments in the same category as chatting with – as not using my alert."

I managed not to look across at Ista Chemie, sitting opposite with Ruuel. It’s very difficult to be all secretive about Nurans when you’re sleepy.

"Range is part of the test outline," Ruuel said. "Scheduled for when we’re on Muina."

For some reason I’d assumed my training would be on hold while chasing Kalasa. I wondered if I’d be sleeping two pods away from Ruuel again – and whether there’d be a drone recording my dreams. And promptly fell asleep. I think I slept on Maze, or dreamed I was sleeping on Maze, but it didn’t feel the way it does when I’m projecting. I didn’t try and force myself awake, anyway, and was back in my window seat when I did wake up.

Not long now until we head to Kalasa. I’d probably be worked up about that if the prospect of making monsters in my sleep wasn’t sucking up all my Emo tendencies.

Monday, June 9

Moving Target

I dreamed of sheep last night, and managed to make myself wake up almost straight away. Which gave me a headache, but was also immensely reassuring. I don’t know if I’ll always be able to break out of them – or am always sufficiently aware of the dreams which I’m making real as opposed to dreams which just seem real – but it did give me a faint sense that I might gain enough control to not be doing things accidentally all the time.

This morning brought a nice bunch of packages from a spending spree I’d indulged in when they scheduled my return to Muina. Another diary, since I’m past two-thirds on this one, and a little cold environment gear because Pandora is hitting Winter now. It took me forever to find a non-hideous beanie. People on Tare don’t have a lot of call for hats, particularly not for the purpose of keeping warm. Most of what I could find was rainproof, heavy-duty, tied-down headgear for the poor bastards who have to venture outside for maintenance in all kinds of weather. Chapstick was a little easier to find, and I managed to put together a couple of tolerable Winter outfits and something which could pass as daywear or nightwear to sleep in. I was thoroughly sick of wearing my uniform all the time when we were at Nurioth and Arenrhon.

Lots of shooting practice. Drake had me in a different training room, with a maze where half a dozen greensuits stalked me. I had fake weapons which registered hits instead of actually working, and had to try and find my way through the maze without dying (having one of the greensuits grab me). As a game it could have been kind of fun, but they were all super-serious which made me feel stressed out and stupid. I died a lot.

After that Mara had me for some time in the gym. She soon had me talking about how hopeless I felt about ever coming close to being able to do something like get through that maze without dying.

"No-one expects you to," she said. "A couple of weeks of training isn’t going to make you capable of picking off Cruzatch with a simple hand weapon. The force vest is what we’re counting on to give you a chance, should you be transported alone." She made a face. "The arguments all this is causing are overwhelming, especially since most of those pushing to return you to Muina are unaware of the latest developments in your talent set. The Array massive has only exacerbated the debate, demonstrating to any who weren’t already certain just how valuable your enhancement can be. But there’s a sense that matters are becoming urgent, that we don’t have the luxury to explore Muina at our leisure, and need to access Kalasa as soon as possible. Do you still feel that you’d rather get it over with?"

I shrugged. "Been more worried about killing everyone with nightmares. Do you – do you ever think you can’t deal with being a Setari any more?"

Mara straightened on the knee-lift machine she’d been using, then unhooked her feet. "In the early days, when everything was new, we thought we were invincible. When Jorly – the first Setari to die on duty was Jorly Kennez, and if there had been some fault, some error of judgment which we could blame her death on, then perhaps it wouldn’t have been so hard. But it was a rotation we had cleared a dozen times, we were all performing well, and still she died. A single lucky blow was all it took. It was only then that I really understood that we were fighting a war of attrition. And their numbers would never decrease. 'Lese – Helese Surion – helped me immensely with that, just by pointing out a few statistics on the number of lives not lost to Ionoth since we began."

"And then she died," I said, in a small voice. I hadn’t expected Mara to really answer my question.

"Yes. Of the original First Squad, only Alay and I were left. Second, Third, Fourth and Seventh – as they were numbered then – had all lost someone. Lohn was injured, but not badly, and he gave me…more than I’d ever thought to have from him, an anchor that I needed. If I’d been in Maze or Alay’s situation, losing the one who mattered most, I doubt I could have continued in the Setari. As it is, they’re neither of them the people they once were. Though–" She paused, and made a wry face. "Maze was convinced, immediately convinced, that the Cruzatch were involved, were more than just escort Ionoth in that massive’s wake. I thought his focus on them, his determination to prove that they had a level of agency above other Ionoth, was simply something he clung to after losing 'Lese. A way of dealing with his grief. Even after the Pillar – it wasn’t until seeing them in Kalasa that I could let myself believe that we really have an enemy to blame. The impact of that is something I can’t describe. And, of course, you had already given us the shift of air when you opened Muina."

She said then that I should go eat before my Sights training, but I stopped and hugged her and whispered, "Thanks," before I went, because she’d told me things that were personal to her, despite my second level monitoring, and that meant a lot to me. I had to look up what "shift of air" meant – it’s a phrase a bit like "the light at the end of the tunnel", except it grew out of a past living deep underground and was all about being trapped in the crushing dark, suffocating, and then feeling a breeze, a hint of fresh air which told you there was a way out. And that’s how Mara felt about being a Setari.

I liked the idea of an anchor. And I’d like to think First Squad is mine: the people I can turn to for comfort and support, who can help me keep it together. But I know it’s Ruuel. Even the comfort, when I’m seriously on the edge. Well, sort of. Hand clutching counts.

Sight Sight talents apparently have an overwhelming need to understand. The Sight is always trying to puzzle out the world, and they see a lot of people’s secrets, and I guess that’s part of why Ruuel works for me – I always feel he sees me very clearly, that I haven’t succeeded in hiding anything from him, and so he knows just what to do or say when I need it most. Of course, he’s also doing his level best to keep me at a distance, but I’m okay with that at the moment. Right now I’m more interested in not Killing People With My Mind.

Tuesday, June 10

So over testing

Today I spent my Sights training session wondering if Ruuel was having nightmares too, since he looks like he’s hardly been sleeping. He’d probably be amused if he knew I was worried about him. The session went well, though, and I’m feeling more confident that I’m not on the verge of self-destructing.

Tomorrow we go to Muina and now that I’ve stopped having dramatic daily nightmares, I’m having to work at not thinking about standing back on that platform.

Wednesday, June 11

Heading Out

Excellent surprise when I arrived with Lohn and Mara at the hanger to board the Litara. Isten Notra is coming with us. She told me that she’d been longing to go since Pandora was established. Shon is coming along to be her minion – nepotism at its finest, she said – and one of her bossy secretaries as well. She’ll be living at Pandora for a while.

I worried about her, though I tried not to be all obvious about it. Isten Notra is what Tarens consider past retirement age and though she’s incredibly sharp and not as wrinkled as your average ninety year-old from Earth, there’s a fine fragility about her which I don’t think really needs to be introduced to her first Winter.

I had fun exposing Shon to Eeli while the Litara hauled itself through a full-on storm to the rift. The atmosphere on this trip is difficult to define. The four most senior squads, all of them tight and professional, and friends between the respective age groups, and I’m pretty sure they’re all absolutely keen to see inside Kalasa. But Maze is tight-lipped and unusually terse, and I’ve caught people from every squad looking at me strangely. After having a primary assignment of keeping me alive, I think they’re all trying to think up some last-minute way to avoid me standing on any platforms. I guess I am too, but I’ve been preparing myself for weeks because it always seemed inevitable, and the more they watch me for signs of imminent breakdown, the calmer I get. I just want to get it done, and then I can relax.

Nearly through the rift now. Today we’re going to try me giving people security clearance. If that doesn’t work, tomorrow I try to take Maze to Kalasa.

Big Boxes

The information being shown on the public channels on Tare is well behind the reality of Muina’s settlement. They started building Pandora just three months ago and already it’s become a living town, with external lighting and sidewalks and bits which will be gardens when it’s not Winter. Of course, having buildings which just grow themselves in a few days, so long as they have enough raw material available, really makes it a lot easier, but they still would have had to do a huge amount of designing and planning and working out power and water and connecting up the toilet recycling system and air-conditioning and outfitting the interiors.

Over fifteen hundred people are living and working here.

There’s only one or two small individual buildings. The rest are blocks three stories high and something like six suburban houses square. Quite huge, in other words. It reminds me a bit of the university campuses I toured (via website) halfway through last year, when trying to decide where to apply. Each of the blocks is devoted to a particular area of exploration and science – so far they’ve built blocks for animals, plants, geography, geology, weather, archaeology, devices and Ena research – along with a bigger central command thing, which combines coordination with greensuit barracks and supplies. There’s a combination of both dorms and permanent accommodation in the science blocks, along with a few outer blocks which are primarily residential and something called services which appears to be where everyone’s food is cooked and laundry is done and stuff like that (though I don’t think they have one centralised mess hall any more). And attached to that is the greenhouse – just as much a big white block as all the rest, but devoted to ensuring that the settlement can survive even if the Litara stops showing up. I’m told they’re already busily producing crops of Muinan plants identified as edible. And a lot of Taren algae which is processed into food.

To my surprise, although there’s some similarities to the severely plain central command block, someone has actually put some thought into appearance when designing the rest of them. There’s all kinds of etched patterns and designs breaking up the severity of the whitestone, and lots of windows (almost all opaquely shuttered to keep out the cold or the view). And sloping roofs! Just a mild tilt – you could probably walk around on them quite safely, but definitely sloping, with some gorgeous patterns cut into them which also serve to direct drainage. Even the central block had been retrofitted so that its roof slopes.

"I’m impressed," I told Isten Notra, peering out the window of the ten-person shuttle taking us from the Litara directly to the central amphitheatre of the old town. "Tarens remembered that buildings have outsides."

"The cities we will one day build on this world…" Isten Notra began, then stopped and hugged me. "We will make it our home again. Thank you for that, Caszandra."

This embarrassed me incredibly, of course, though I am getting more used to people thanking me emotionally for something I did by accident. I distracted myself by digging into my backpack and pulling out the two beanies I’d bought. I gave Isten Notra the blue and purple one and talked about things I’d learned on my two whole trips skiing at Thredbo, particularly that you lose a surprising amount of heat through the top of your head. Isten Notra was very sensibly dressed, but like everyone else who’d been travelling on the Litara, had nothing resembling headgear. She thanked me and plonked it on right away, making her secretary act like he’d just eaten a lemon. I think beanies might count as little kid hats on Tare or something. Lohn certainly looked like he was trying not to laugh.

I didn’t particularly care, though. My beanie was two shades of green and when they opened the shuttle door I was damn glad I’d brought it. It was cold enough to make my nose hurt, and everyone’s breath steamed out in clouds. It hasn’t snowed at Pandora yet, but they think it will very soon, and you can see a dusting of white on the higher hills in the distance.

New arrivals to Muina are always taken first thing to a platform to be cleared, and whenever possible are all done at once to avoid making the Ddura anxious. There were about twenty newcomers on this trip, easily handled. I stayed on one side of the arena with First Squad as Shon and Isten Notra became official Muinans. The Ddura showed up midway through the process, and made happy noises, but was far less wildly exuberant than those first days. The question of whether I could give people access to Kalasa was settled as soon as the shuttle took the new arrivals off to the warmth of the buildings. No.

I tried thinking all sorts of commands at the platform, but it didn’t react at all as it does when it gets told people are Muinans. And no-one was teleported anywhere standing on it. Maze didn’t push against the inevitable once we’d run through the test options, having Mara take me off to the medical section in the main block for the headache the Ddura had given me. It’s not as excited as it was, and shuts up more on command, but it does still hang about letting off occasional moans if people play with the platform. He’s scheduled the mission for quite early the next day since by then it was evening for me and very late in First Squad’s day, though only just sunset at Pandora.

After my headache had lifted, Maze sat with me to explain exactly what we’ll be trying tomorrow, and was being very calm and reassuring, but with his eyes so unhappy. I wish I could make him feel better about this. They want me bunk down here in medical tonight, thoroughly monitored. I can see they’re worried I’ll have nightmares about Kalasa, and I can’t tell them what’s distracted me from tomorrow. You see, it’s occurred to me that there’s a faint possibility that Ruuel was at least partially aware of the good dreams. If I could make Mori feel she was being stung by giant insects, could Ruuel have spent night after night on the Diodel wondering why it felt like there was a girl snuggling up against him?

It’s an awful thought. I’m hoping it’s just me being paranoid, since I suspect that if he’d been aware of the strangeness of my dreams at Arenrhon he’d have sent me straight for testing. But now that he does know, and now that I definitely am strong enough to make people feel things, I get to be all worried about having a good dream, instead of looking forward to it.

Ruuel has been tied up with something. I glimpsed him once on the Litara, but it was only during the platform experiments that I was close enough to see he still looks tired, and I haven’t seen him since then. I don’t know if the Setari are even in the same building – except for Jeh from Second, who seems to have drawn first babysitting shift, and is in the next room. It’s probably best if Ruuel’s far away, preferably somewhere shielded.

Unfair. Good dreams about Ruuel had almost made me look forward to this mission. But while I have no problems with me privately having all sorts of fantasies about him, it’s totally another ball game making him have dreams about me.

I’ll try for otters.

Thursday, June 12

Into Kalasa

I dreamed I was sitting on the side of Ruuel’s bed, watching him sleep. My subconscious making a compromise, I guess. It was a little cell of a room, just a single bed and a rack for luggage and a door. There wasn’t any light, so I’m not altogether sure how I could see, but it was all very clear.

He wasn’t wearing his uniform, the first time I’ve seen him in anything else. A dark boxer-brief and singlet arrangement. And he was having a nightmare, was shifting fretfully under a half kicked-off blanket. Fully living up to the Place Sight reputation for being haunted. He looked like he was in pain, and I longed to touch him, but instead I made myself wake up. I knew it wasn’t fair of me to watch. I don’t think I was projecting, just looking, which is a big leap forward in control. Not that I’ll mention it to anyone.

Taarel wasn’t with him. Stupid thing to be happy about, and I suppose it’s terribly unlikely they’d be together during a mission anyway. I didn’t dream again after that, and was woken up by Maze, who took me off to an early breakfast with a bunch of greysuit section heads who wanted to ask me about Winter. Being a Sydney girl, I thought this was tremendously funny, but neither Tare nor Kolar have much experience with snow. Tare has a semi-frozen polar region with scarcely any solid ground, while the Kolarens actually live at their poles because the equator area is too hot. So even Australians know things they don’t about seasons, and I yabbered on about hibernation and igloos and tree branches breaking off from the weight of snow, and seasonal migration of animals, and then wandered into a tangent about Ice Ages and dinosaurs. I now have an assignment to review all the information being collated about Muina’s plants and animals, mark any that seem familiar, like the hairy sheep, and write little essays on everything I know about the Earth equivalent.

After that, Maze took me to be outfitted in my chest armour of ultimate doom, and all the gear I’m expected to carry. A breather, of course, and a good wad of rations and thin water bottles and a firelighter because I’d specifically requested one (I’m so over making fires by rubbing two sticks together). The gun, and a spare charge pack for it. A small and a large relay beacon – one I can wear and one I’ll be holding which is very powerful but they were worried it wouldn’t come through with me. Maze carted that about for me – it must have weighed twenty kilos.

He was very much in control of himself, calm and relaxed on the surface at least, even when he was telling me what he wanted me to do if he didn’t come through with me. Basically get off the platform and get back on, since that might be all that was required. If not, head for the next platform. He’d made me read through all the information about Cruzatch before we came to Muina, which hadn’t really made me more comfortable about being anywhere near them.

"You’re facing up to this very well," he said, finally. "But I know that you must be nervous."

I shrugged. "Would be stupid not to be. But it’s got to be easier than last time, after all, even if I get stuck there by myself."

He sighed, and gave me a quick hug (which made me feel hot all over – it’s very different when Maze does that to when Lohn does). "The first few moments after arrival will be critical," he said. "You will have the advantage of surprise – don’t waste it."

We met up with the rest of First Squad and levitated over to the amphitheatre, where the other squads were waiting with a mix of greensuits and greysuits. I was totally distracted by tiny flakes of white swirling and drifting around us as we flew. Two trips to Thredbo hasn’t made snow any less of a novelty to me and I said as we dropped down to the amphitheatre: "We have to have an epic snowball fight if it gets deep enough."

"The frozen rain?" Lohn asked. Tare doesn’t have a word for snow, though I guess old Muinan must. I’d taught them the Earth word for snow instead. "How do you fight with it?"

"You scrunch it into balls and throw it at each other. And you can make forts to hide behind. But for fun," I emphasised, smiling hello to everyone waiting about in the cold. "Not to figure out the most efficient way to kill things in snowy places or anything."

Maze shook his head slightly – I think he thought I was putting on a brave face or something – but said: "All right – if there’s enough snow we’ll have an epic ball of snow fight. Ready now?"

I nodded, and he brought me into mission channel, adding over it: "We’ve all been fully briefed. Let’s do this."

Four squads are a lot of people, and the amount of machinery which has been installed in the platform room, along with various technicians, made it feel quite close and cramped. But warmer than up top, at least.

"Verifying equipment function," said the one technician who was in the main mission channel.

Maze handed me back the heavier relay, and then had me take the carting Cass about position, and bound our suits together as best he could with my chest armour interfering. Zee got up on the platform with an even more powerful drone, since they were hoping I might bring everything through which was on the platform, whether or not I was touching it.

"Clear to begin," said one of the bluesuits over the mission channel, and Maze lifted us both up and dropped down on the platform.

It worked. Even to the point of bringing Zee and the drone through with us. Maze let his breath out, and he and Zee shared a look of total relief, even as they both reacted to this weird, crystalline web filling the room. It made a little dome over the top of the platform, and was particularly thick on the side which was broken, hiding the cisterns below.

There were two Cruzatch, over by the room’s entrance, but before they could do anything they had to hastily dodge the pieces of rubble and shattered wall Maze threw at them. The crystalline stuff snapped and broke apart.

"Blocking the entrance till we know more about what this is," Maze said, already busily doing so. He just shoved the Cruzatch out with the slabs of fallen wall and then piled the stone up.

While he was busy fishing up bits of fallen stone and preventing the Cruzatch from getting back into the room, Zee extruded a bit of her uniform into a thin cloth and wrapped it around one end of a stick of broken crystal, setting it there like a handgrip.

"Three or four dozen in the immediate area," Zee said, taking the heavy relay from me and handing me the stick of crystal. "We’ll hold them out of the room. Bring back the rest of the squad, and get some kind of initial impression on this."

Maze swept a corner of the room clear and shifted us and the big drone off the platform. "Satellite signal not reaching," Zee told him, and he nodded and then picked me up physically and dropped me back on the platform.

I shifted back to Pandora immediately, the suddenness of it a bit disorienting since I’d expected a delay. Blinking, I looked around at the circle of waiting Setari, then slid back off the platform, saying rapidly: "Forty Cruzatch, and the room is full of crystal – some kind of trap. Maze wants to know what it is. He’s barricaded the entrance."

Ruuel was conveniently nearby, so I handed the stick to him as a greysuit materialised at my elbow and insisted on shining a light in my eyes and making me follow it. The rest of First Squad climbed on the platform and – when the greysuit said they couldn’t see any immediate impact on me – Second Squad joined them.

The faintest brush of fingers on my arm brought my attention back to Ruuel, who had enhanced and now touched one bare finger very lightly to the crystal stick. He was still looking tired, but calmly analytical as he gazed down at the crystal.

"Good instinct," he said, at last. "The elementals – fire, light, electricity particularly – will cause it to become a gas. Not poisonous. The intention of this is to capture."

"Understood," Grif from Second Squad said, and I found myself lifted back on the platform, Ketzaren and Alay flanking me even before my feet touched the stone.

The next couple of minutes were pretty frantic. Cruzatch are dangerous close-combat fighters, and their claws can cut through things: not quite as easily as a light-sabre, but enough to mean that Maze’s barricade wasn’t holding. And there were dozens of the things. The telekinetics took point, using the splintering rock to force them backward, out of the trapped room. I was sent straight back to Pandora, to bring Third and Fourth Squad, and the Setari went full-out once they were out of the range of the crystal.

Ketzaren and Alay kept me close, but moved me out of the platform room, even though Maze had broken up most of the crystal and shoved the pieces off to one side. By the time I got outside the battle was aerial, and the Cruzatch were retreating.

"Don’t pursue individually," Maze said, and the Setari dropped down to gather in the very centre of Kalasa, then broke into two – Second and Third staying at the central point with me, while First and Fourth vanished into a big building about four levels up.

I didn’t like that: listening to Maze’s occasional terse instructions but not able to see what was happening. The Cruzatch tried to ambush them, and it sounded like it got pretty hairy for a couple of moments. I guess my expression mustn’t have been particularly guarded – First and Fourth Squad are most of the people I care about on this world – because Taarel put her hand on my shoulder for a moment and smiled at me, eyes full of confidence and reassurance. She really is so very kingly.

It was over relatively quickly, though, and we listened to them discussing what sounded like another malachite marble. The Cruzatch had apparently vanished through it much like I can use the platforms. For the short term the two squads used fallen rubble to block the entrance, then came back down to stand in the central circle.

"We’ll report in and move on to phase two," Maze said, but then paused, looking up, and they all gazed up with him – not at any threat, but at Kalasa. Damaged, but still the city of the Lantarens. No-one said a word, they all just took a moment and looked.

I then spent the rest of the day playing taxi. Maze reported in, and I brought through a mixed bag of greensuits and greysuits. The Setari took the drone up to the highest point of the city, while the greysuits tried to decide where to start, and just before we called it a day a satellite finally succeeded in detecting it – it’s on the other side of the world from Pandora and slightly south, on an island in one of the biggest lakes. The Diodel is on its way there now, stuffed with technicians, and Second Squad along for safety. They’re going to start a settlement and try to work out how to get through the city’s shield from the outside while another bunch chip away at it from within. The malachite marble/power stone doesn’t seem to turn it off like at the Arenrhon installation.

No-one’s allowed to stay inside Kalasa overnight (night in this case being when I’m off-duty), although there’s half a dozen drones there, particularly around the re-sealed Cruzatch escape hatch. It was a long day of tentative exploration, though we did get a break for lunch – whereupon I was hugged by an awful lot of people (Nils blew in my ear for good measure, and laughed very wickedly at my reaction). I gather from something Eeli let slip that the Setari had been under strict orders to not worry me with discussions of how little they wanted me to get on any platforms. I’m back in medical again, but this time because they want to monitor me for aftereffects of being of taxi. I don’t much like sleeping in medical because the greysuits insist on popping in and out of the room. I can track their movements, though they’re still not as clear to me as the Setari.

There were crystal web traps on every single platform. I don’t think standing on the platform would have been easier than last time, if I’d come through alone.

Friday, June 13

Wake up

I outdid myself last night.

It started out unremarkable. I focused on sheep going to sleep, dreamed predictably of sheep and woke myself up almost immediately. Zee was designated babysitter, sitting in the waiting room next door, but later she left and Ruuel came and sat next to me. And then two Cruzatch rose up at the end of the bed, grabbed an ankle each, and hauled.

There’s no way to know where I would have ended up if Ruuel hadn’t been there. The room’s scanner shows him sitting in the half-lit room, relaxed in his chair, then straightening and looking intently at me, and then hurling himself forward and grabbing me as I abruptly upended. He only just managed a hold under my arms, and was almost pulled off his feet. The Cruzatch I was dreaming were very strong.

In my dream I screamed, but I make no sound on the log as blood spatters down over both of us and the sheet tangled with my legs catches alight. A panicking greysuit runs in as Ruuel uses telekinesis to pull the sheet away. Fortunately the second greysuit was less panicky and dropped a silver tinfoil sheet over it. But that was later. First Ruuel said, very clear and urgent into my ear: "It’s a dream, Cassandra. Wake up."

I hadn’t known. Or, on some level I had, but all this happened in the first few moments of my dream, so I’d barely had time to do more than process shock and pain. And then I made myself wake up and if Ruuel hadn’t had incredible reflexes I probably would have face-planted into the floor.

Although I won’t have the blood poisoning and chill and exhaustion this time around, I managed to injure myself worse than the real Cruzatch had. I’ve moved well beyond temporary marks that fade away, anyway, and now have a fine collection of inch-deep gouges, burns and bruises and a dislocated ankle along with hairline fractures. I remember very distinctly one of the greysuits saying in complete disbelief: "She dislocated her own ankle?" and suspect from the indrawn breath which followed that Ruuel must have said something particularly curt over the interface. That’s the only thing I have any real recollection of for the first few minutes after breaking out of the dream, beyond feeling rigidly frozen, and absolutely determined not to let go of Ruuel. He just said: "Deep breaths," to me whenever I started to shake, and shifted me about as necessary so the medics could stop me from bleeding everywhere.

By the time they’d pumped me full of painkillers and put my ankle back the way it’s supposed to be, both Maze and Mara had arrived. Mara took over the clutchee role for a change of clothes and room: necessary given the blood-spattered and charred state of both. All that and a really horrible drink made me calm down enough for my brain to start working.

Maze and Ruuel came to my new room after the greysuit had finished telling me exactly what I’d done to myself and how long it would take to fix. She was still wide-eyed about it all, and looked a bit regretful when Maze dismissed her with a word of thanks. Mara stayed helping me sit up at the top of the bed, resting me against her shoulder with an arm around my waist. I think I’d quite happily sleep that way if I didn’t think it would drive her mad having to stay still half the night.

"Did you know that I was going to dream badly tonight?" I asked Ruuel. My voice gets so little-girl and small when I’m upset. I hate it. At least me speaking made Maze look slightly less concerned – I hadn’t managed to do more than nod and shake my head before that.

"I considered it likely," Ruuel said, sounding as correct as usual, but I think he was relieved too. "You dealt with the need to return to Kalasa by facing it, by attempting to take a level of control preparing for it. Because it was necessary for you to not be afraid, you weren’t. There was always a high chance that after the hurdle was past, and you were no longer steeled against it, the nightmare of your first visit would recur. Add to that cages, around every platform at Kalasa. After a day thinking through the implications, a nightmare about being kidnapped by Cruzatch."

That little speech put paid to any doubts I had left about Ruuel knowing I’m obsessed with him. He can see right through me. But I wasn’t feeling very focused on romance at that moment.

"Cruzatch ever tried to capture Setari?"

"No. Their interest is almost certainly you."

Mara rubbed my arm, but Ruuel was right about me having thought most of this through yesterday. "If Cruzatch show up and offer to rescue me from evil and misguided Tarens, absolutely will set off alert straight away." I allowed myself to enjoy Maze’s expression, then sighed. "Not so sure won’t accidentally kidnap myself. Thought I was getting better at this."

"You were able to break out of this dream, though," Maze pointed out. "You’ve consistently broken out of every dream since your dream of the insect creatures in your room, yes?"

I glanced down at my legs, which are very decoratively encased in varying thicknesses of blueish nanocloth.

"There’s no way to guarantee you won’t do more damage," Ruuel said straightforwardly. "The daily exercises have obviously helped, but now that you’ve reached the point of being capable of killing yourself or another, the next week will be critical. You’re unlikely to have another occurrence tonight. Tomorrow we’ll arrange for quarters which put you at a safer distance from other personnel. It’s also unlikely we’ll go ahead with the planned entry of Kalasa, but expect training if your condition allows. Ista Kyle will sedate you tonight."

He glanced at Maze, nodded at me (or Mara) and left. Though he only went as far as the next room, which is something I wouldn’t have known a couple of months ago. Maze looked at me through narrowed eyes, told me Mara would stay with me for the rest of the night, and then went and lurked about the next room as well.

"Ruuel take courses in psychology?" I asked Mara.

"All captain candidates study psychology," Mara said. "I take it he’s right in telling us you find it easier to handle issues if we don’t downplay them?"

"If I think you’re holding back, have to try and guess what you’re not telling me," I said. "Got a good imagination."

One of the greysuits came in, asked me a couple of questions about my pain level and shot me full of sedative, which hit me like a cotton-wool tank, but Mara obligingly continued to let me use her as a pillow, at least until I passed out. After that she shifted to the chair by the bed but kept hold of my hand.

I slept most of the day. Ruuel must have decided I wasn’t up to training, since I haven’t seen him so far. Lots of visitors from the squads, though, and Isten Notra came to see me and left Shon to fill my ears with his thoughts about animals and snow and Kalasa. He’s loving it here. I don’t think he knows precisely how I was injured – he didn’t ask, anyway. I feel vaguely guilty about all those very eager greysuits desperate to get back into Kalasa today and not able to.

Whenever the pain meds wear off my legs tell me that I did a lot of damage. I can walk to the ensuite, but Maze came in while I was creeping back to my bed and gave me a lecture about not asking for help. Then he took me to my new room, in a small building near the lake which either I didn’t spot before or they created and outfitted specifically for me overnight. It’s crammed full of scanners, and will be a combination of living quarters and test area for me.

Saturday, June 14

Don’t shoot the messenger

Back to Kalasa today. Instead of working the entire day as a taxi, they had me bring through everyone in the morning, then took me back to my room to rest. Since the platform won’t work if I’m just levitating above it, Par carried me the entire time, very romantically in his arms and rather pink around the ears. Even with that my legs started throbbing, and I was glad to lie down again and get another dose of painkiller. I swear Mum wouldn’t be impressed with the amount of drugs I get through. I’m more injured than I properly understood at first – the wounds were deep, and the burns I think would be classed as second-degree. The painkillers they give me are really effective at blocking out what it feels like, but they’re deliberately short-term doses so that the greysuits can assess my condition, and when I’m not quite fully medicated I feel awful. Plus they keep giving me restoratives and fortifiers: horrible drinks and injections which really do help with healing, but also leave me absolutely exhausted. It’s annoying because I go through good patches and want to move about and feel almost normal, and then I completely run out of steam. Maze made me promise to not try and walk any more, and I’ve learned my lesson from that already, since that one stumbling trip to the bathroom made the medics re-do all my weird nanotech bandaging and lower my pain medication so that I can feel that I’m hurting myself when I walk. I hate having to be carried to the bathroom. Hate catheters more, though.

After playing taxi, I slept the rest of the morning. Normal dreams, fragmentary and not quite logical, and I felt really quite good when I woke up just before lunch. The temperature had risen, and I talked Ista Temen – the greysuit on shift – into letting Par set up a chair and footrest outside so I could look at the view. It was a beautiful day – extremely blue sky, no wind, and the chill gone out of the air. The thin patches of snow which had formed all melted, and the lake looked amazing.

Since Par’s slightly more inclined to talk if you get him alone, I asked him about his impressions of Kalasa and wasn’t surprised to find that his feelings were mixed. "I’m glad to have seen it," he said. "But it makes me angry. And proud. And ashamed."

"Do you think the solution will be there?"

He shook his head, then added reluctantly: "If they had known the spaces would be shattered, they wouldn’t have done it." And didn’t add the would they? he was obviously thinking. I wish I could talk to people about what was in the Nuran’s book, but it’s still being kept very quiet. I also wish I knew if Inisar had followed me to Muina. He’s obviously capable of it, but avoiding the Ddura might pose him some difficulties.

The Litara arrived then, giving me the usual huge kick out of watching it settle on the lake. I always imagine Jules' reaction, and wish I could at least send postcards. Send Mum a happy snap or two of me relaxing on the shore of a lake on an alien world, watching a spaceship land and, as it turned out, a bunch of psychic space ninjas arriving. Squad One, who had returned briefly to Kolar while their Second Squad represented Kolar on Muina, but now were on Muina shift again. They flew directly from the Litara toward the command centre, and must have seen me wave to them since after they’d reported in or dropped off their luggage or whatever they were doing they all came back to say hello. When she found I couldn’t stand up Katzyen, being the get-things-done person she is, relocated a bunch of rocks from the very edge of the lake to make a circle of stony seats so that they could stop looming over me. So now I have my own outdoor entertainment area.

"We heard you’d been injured again," Taranza said, eyeing my propped-up legs. I was wearing my uniform for warmth, and the bandaging makes me look like I have double-sized ankles.

"And couldn’t find out how," Katzyen added, up-front as usual. "Most anyone would say is an accident in medical."

"I did to myself," I said. "Been developing talent which keep using accidentally when I’m sleeping. Set sheet alight. Really embarrassing."

That usefully kept to the truth and let them assume I was developing a fire talent instead of illusions-which-feel-real or whatever. Squad One asked me about the first time I’d ended up in Kalasa – they don’t get access to the Taren Setari mission logs usually, but KOTIS had given them extracts – and they fetched down lunch and we had a bit of a picnic and talked about swimming, which is not a skill found on Kolar, and about Kalasa and Earth, and speculated on what it was that gave only me a security pass to Kalasa.

Katzyen challenged Par to a stone skipping competition, and the rest of Squad One except Shaf and Nalaz joined in. I was wondering if it would be possible to throw stones while Par levitated me when Shaf said: "I’ve been asked to speak to you on behalf of the government of Kolar."

I pretty much guessed what it would be, and didn’t want to go there. But I couldn’t think of anything to say to stop him, other than a wild temptation to make a crack about rescuing me from evil and misguided Tarens.

"The government of Kolar would like to extend to you an invitation to aid Kolar’s Setari in the planet’s defence," Shaf said, his voice quiet and even, his eyes meeting mine very directly. But his tanned cheeks were darker than normal and grew darker still as he went on to talk about what I’d get in return.

He stopped, and there was this awkward little silence where I was working not to gape at him. I could see Nalaz just past him, gazing fiercely out over the lake, rigidly upright. Then I felt incredibly sorry for them both, and said: "You look so mortified."

Shaf dropped his eyes, but Nalaz turned his head toward us and I think he was liking me for saying that.

"Wouldn’t this mess up the alliance between Tare and Kolar?"

"Strain it," Shaf said. "But they can’t dictate where you choose to live. Not without changing their own laws. And Kolar is suffering badly from attacks by larger Ionoth."

"Can you record an answer to give to the government of Kolar?" I asked, and Shaf nodded. I’m sure he was logging the conversation anyway.

"Okay." I sometimes forget and use English words – things like okay and hi – often enough that a lot of people here now know what I mean. "So, money first. There’s nothing for me to spend it on. Everything I could be bribed with is on Earth, and it’s not like I have to pay rent. Second, Taren Setari rescued me. If they hadn’t, I’d be here alone figuring out how to survive Winter. I’m not going to forget that. Third, Kolar, while it’s probably more like my own world than Tare is, has legal cloning. I know Tarens have lots of arguments about me being irreplaceable, but I think so far they’re keeping to their laws about cloning. Tarens having enough trouble stopping me from falling apart mentally as it is, without risking me getting all worked up thinking they’re cloning me. On Kolar…I wouldn’t be as sure. Would probably enjoy visiting Kolar one day when whole problem with gates tearing everywhere is fixed, but fixing the gates is what I’m theoretically helping with now, and that will solve problem for both worlds. And I’m – I’m not for sale."

Something of my feelings came through in that, and I shook my head and added: "That’s it."

Shaf gave me a strained smile. "Thank you."

"Pretend we didn’t have this conversation," I said, and proceeded to do so. Which was easy enough since Ista Temen showed up and gave me another load of injections and I suddenly needed a nanna nap. Thankfully. That was without a doubt the most embarrassing conversation I’ve ever had.

But when I woke up – a little before I was due to go and play taxi again – I sent an email to Isten Notra attaching the log. I did think long and hard about not telling anyone at all, but it was within the bounds of possibility that the Kolaren government might not drop the subject. Besides, I’m convinced Ruuel would be able to tell.

Isten Notra opened a channel. "I needn’t warn you that this is something you will not discuss."

"Is Kolar’s situation really that bad?" I hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention to the news just recently.

"They’ve been hard-pressed these last few weeks, taking significant losses. Kolar has not officially requested…borrowing you, but a great deal of interest was generated by the battle with the Array massive. I am going to order increased security for you, Caszandra."

"Figured. Can it be for only when I’m out of main KOTIS facility?"

She agreed to this readily enough, and asked me how I was feeling and said that we’d be heading back into Kalasa a little earlier than planned because she couldn’t resist going to look and had finally bullied all the people telling her how unwise that would be into submission. They really aren’t at all keen on Isten Notra risking herself, since her understanding of the Ena is one of the things they’re counting on to find a solution to the fracturing spaces. I think Isten Notra and Inisar should sit down to chat.

The temperature had dropped by the time we headed for Kalasa, and I was pleased that Isten Notra was wearing her beanie. Shon and her secretary were along, of course, and she had arranged for Squad One to come as well, and peppered Shaf with questions, giving no hint that she knew the Kolarens had tried to buy me. I’m not sure if she’s even going to tell the squad captains.

It was night all the way on the other side of the world, though soon to be dawn. Glade came down to join Par in walking about with me, and I could see he was brimming over with enthusiasm and excitement. I couldn’t really blame him – Kalasa is a fairy castle of a city, cracked around the edges, but gloriously spectacular. On the far side of the shield it was snowing madly, giving a reverse snow dome atmosphere, and all the walls were glowing. A few more ordinary lights had been installed at points of particular activity, but in the context they looked as strange and unreal as all the rest of it. But the city feels more claimed now and doesn’t immediately conjure up nightmare memories. Or maybe it was that I was resting against Par’s chest most of the time – he’s a very comforting guy.

All three Taren Setari squads gathered together, greeting Squad One with nods, and Maze gave a concise report of progress so far. They’ve found what seems to be a library/training academy, which they’re all very excited about, though they haven’t done more than stare from the door since the contents seem inclined to fall apart at a glance. The shield has protected the contents of the city, but it hasn’t magically preserved them.

The building with the malachite marble has been very rigorously sealed – and the drones stationed there indicate that the Cruzatch did make an attempt to return the previous day. The city is in part still functional, at least with whatever was making the water in my bathroom warm, and there’s so much everyday information about the Lantarens that the greysuits are in ecstasy. The Setari have been doing a preliminary evaluation and map of the site, which is taking a lot of time. Maze didn’t actually call the place "freakin' huge" but Lohn’s expression did. As I’d learned first time out, there’s a lot of sub-surface structure.

The shielding makes the one around Arenrhon pale by comparison. It isn’t controlled by the malachite marble, and is giving the greysuits something to argue about, since turning it off would leave the city exposed to the Winter storms. But they’d found a door. And wanted to poke me at it, of course. It was situated about halfway up the valley, at a point where two of the mountains came together, and was damn big, obviously designed to impress new arrivals, and gorgeously covered in carvings of leaves and vines and trees and water and animals peeping through, but no godlike people.

"The shielding runs through the walls, but the signature is very different through these doors," Islen Tezart said. "We’ve tried Ena manipulation with no response. We’re hoping it will react to you."

Since everyone had been in the process of packing up and gathering ready to go back, I ended up with quite an audience and felt completely idiotic, especially when I put my hand on the door and nothing happened. "Feels warm," I said. Then added: "Open Sesame" hopefully and was really shocked when it worked.

Well, I don’t think the words worked so much as me wanting it to open, giving it some sort of mental order. It opened outward, with a cracking noise I later realised was ice breaking, and I was hit by a full-on gale and everyone was pelted with snowflakes. Par hastily moved me a long way back out of the frigid wind and Second Squad, who had been sitting about in the Diodel hoping for a break in the weather, came inside for a brief reunion. Opening the door allowed the drones to communicate clearly with the satellite and they decided that it was better to just block it physically instead of closing it.

Pleased to no longer be the only way into Kalasa, I was a cheerful taxi back to Pandora for the night, and fell asleep in the middle of a big group dinner in the main building. I woke up back in my little building, with Lohn and Mara playing babysitter in the next room.

I didn’t know I’d lost my beanie till Ruuel gave it back to me, just after I’d transported Fourth Squad. He told me there’d be training tomorrow, if the medics cleared me, and then walked off with Taarel, but I was in too good a mood to be conflicted and sad, and was distracted trying to remember enough of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves to tell it properly to Isten Notra.

Sunday, June 15

Hot/Cold

After playing taxi this morning for a good half hour, with Glade carrying me, I spent some time in the main building having a very in-depth medicking session. My legs look amazingly horrible. The greysuits seem fairly confident that they’ll be able to get me fixed up without significant scarring (after all, they can regrow skin, muscle, bone – probably everything except a missing head) but I’m not to try walking even short distances for a few more days. Part of the problem is I basically did everything to my legs all at once – burns, deep tissue bruising, hairline fractures and massive gouges. All from the knee down, which makes managing it a little easier – though Ruuel did give me a few bruises stopping me from kidnapping myself.

The medics neutralised my pain meds completely during the first bit, which nicely demonstrated to me that my legs hurt an awful lot. It was Mori and Glade’s turn to baby-sit me, and Mori did a lot of hand-squeezing and tried to distract me and I tried to pretend my eyes weren’t full of tears. My new security arrangements seem to mean I have two Setari with me at all times, even when I’m just sleeping. Not suffocatingly so – they stay mostly in the next room while I sleep and will let me alone to read and things – but they don’t allow anyone, even the greysuits, to be alone with me. Even Shon, who came to chat when I woke up for lunch. Fourth Squad is covering my days, and First and Third are rotating through covering the sleep shift. Eeli was part of my babysitting team during the dawn shift last night, and is a quite overwhelming person to have breakfast with.

It’s hard to tell what Fourth Squad thinks about being taken off Kalasa-exploration to baby-sit me. Not visibly annoyed, at least, but I wouldn’t expect that of them. Nor particularly wary of me, even though I’m probably as dangerous to them as I am to myself at the moment. Mori and Glade patently had no idea that they were guarding me from Kolarens.

After lunch, it was Ruuel and Sonn’s turn, and time for some training. Ruuel was at his crispest and most efficient, levitating me into the second room and onto the scan chair after the scarcest of warnings. "Until you’ve recovered strength, these sessions will be confined to objects in the immediate area," he said. "And concentrate on the manifestations in this world. Keep your eyes open."

He had me try and make a copy of a mug which was sitting right in front of me. Keeping my eyes open was harder than it sounds, almost as bad as keeping your eyes open when sneezing. Every time I started to shut them, Ruuel would say "Eyes." He never sounded impatient, but I came dangerously close to trying to manifest a mug, preferably full of something hot, falling from the ceiling onto his head. Though he probably would have dodged.

But I did do it, eventually. The cup looked exactly the same, and not blurry either, so it probably wasn’t floating around out in the Ena at the same time. I felt like I’d been trying to tie knots in cherry stalks with my tongue, but it was there.

And something else was too. I didn’t notice it until Ista Temen took a deep breath. Sonn picked up the mug gingerly, and I could see the steam rising off it before I recognised the smell. Unfortunately, that surprised me enough that the mug vanished.

"What was it?" Ista Temen asked as I sat back in disappointment. "It smelled delicious."

"Hot chocolate," I said. "Earth drink. All these planets, and none of them have chocolate. Severe oversight in world creation."

"Was its inclusion deliberate?" Ruuel asked.

"No. Well, I was thinking about hot drinks." I gave him a bland look, but he was being all business as usual and didn’t show any sign of knowing my thoughts.

"Repeat the exercise without letting your attention wander," he said, and kept me at it until I could produce the mug without taking ten minutes to manage it, and had the inevitable headache. But they’re decreasing in severity.

"Is it warm again today?" I asked Ista Temen while she was giving me another dose of drugs. "Can I go outside?"

It was, fortunately – much warmer than when the morning shift went to Kalasa. Ruuel called the rest of his squad down and had them try and hit each other while he watched, offering the occasional critical comment. No approving nods this time, and I decided it was stupid to feel let down just because he hadn’t given me any either. He’s very strict with his squad.

I watched for a while, then searched for birds out on the lake, but I think they must have all migrated somewhere warmer. I was wondering how much trouble I’d get in if I tried to make a mug of hot chocolate without permission – and whether it would be possible to drink it – when Ruuel (standing just behind me and not at all where I’d thought he was) asked: "And would you have survived a Winter here alone?"

Barely managing not to jump out of my skin, I tilted my head back to look up at him, surprised he’d asked me a question not related to any assignment. That Isten Notra had obviously shown him the log of my conversation with the Kolarens wasn’t unexpected, but I wanted to see if there was any hint of anger in his face. He was looking out, though, not down at me.

"Barring accidents, probably," I said. "The Ddura was keeping the Ionoth away, and the local predators had plenty of more familiar things to hunt. I would have had to stop being so squeamish and try to kill some of the sheep, though. Living on fruit and nuts wasn’t doing me a great deal of good, and along with the meat the skins would have given me clothes, blankets and hides to block the windows with. Only had the vaguest idea how to cure hides, though, so probably would have been very smelly." I grinned, remembering the filthy creature comment from The Hidden War, then sighed. "But the blood would have attracted predators, and the rams might have attacked me to protect their ewes. I don’t think I’d have been able to manage a broken bone, though I suppose it’s just barely possible the aether would have helped that heal. Probably wouldn’t have survived that chest infection if moonfall had been a day or two later. Very handy."

I paused and looked speculatively toward the old town, but Ruuel said: "You can no longer risk exposure."

Because, like the Setari, I was now too dangerous to get drunk. It’s lucky I’d more or less given up drinking already, or I might have had to be annoyed about that. It’s moonfall tonight, too. I’m not even allowed to go outside and watch it because it gets very cold once the sun drops.

"I doubt I would have enjoyed surviving Winter very much, though," I said, looking back out at the lake, beautiful and indifferent. "And eventually I’d have gotten sick or hurt myself, and died."

He didn’t say anything to that, but he stayed standing behind me for a while, maybe like me thinking about all the things which would have been different. Then he dismissed his squad, and took me to the amphitheatre for the afternoon’s taxi service.

It sounds like a minor thing, but he carried me as Par and Glade did, which was mildly embarrassing when it was them, and with Ruuel sufficient to throw me into mute confusion. It’s never a small thing for me when Ruuel touches me. Even a finger-brush of enhancement can send a tingle through me, and I’m always aware that Place Sight will tell him way too much about my reactions. It’s very rare that he carries me – Par is my Fourth Squad toter. Even the standard carrying position is something I usually have to prepare myself for, so that my heartbeat doesn’t skyrocket too obviously. All I could think of when he lifted me today was how close his face was to mine.

They’ve been carrying me about like that because my legs hurt more if they’re not elevated, as well as the need for contact for the platforms. Floating above them won’t trigger it, but someone standing on them holding me does.

I could feel every breath. And fell asleep while he was waiting for them to load the platform for the second trip. Kind of contradictory. It was like those dreams on the Diodel. Very peaceful, and yet sharply defined. I could hear his heartbeat, since my head was resting on his shoulder, and was almost glad when the Ddura showed up, noisy as it is, since the platform room is chock-full of drones no doubt busily recording a projection of me gazing up at Ruuel in the Ena. The Ddura could certainly see us, and was being all chirpily pleased until I told it to shut up – and was pleased in turn, because it seems more obedient when I’m dreaming.

The platform room in Kalasa looked different, too, quite distractingly so, pulling my attention away from Ruuel until he was flying me back, when I indulged in gazing up at him, enjoying all the tiny fine detail of a close-up view which wouldn’t be recorded by drones or second level monitoring. He is so worth looking at.

When we returned to my little building, Ruuel put me carefully on my bed, then said: "Your instructions were to wake yourself whenever you began dreaming lucidly."

No surprise that he’d known. I made myself wake up, winced, then said: "Didn’t need the headache."

I drew a breath to tell him about how different Kalasa had been while I was asleep, but he said in a distinctly cooler tone: "Keep to the training plan. You can’t have forgotten the consequences of letting your guard down."

"No." My face burned and I looked away. "Sorry."

I pretended to still be very tired while Ista Temen checked me over, and after a while they all went into the next room and I worked on keeping perspective, but still cried just a little, and then did visualisation exercises until I dozed off. Lohn and Mara are babysitting me now, sitting out the evening shift.

I should have accepted Ruuel’s offer to change trainers. He’s definitely the best person for keeping me calm, but I don’t seem able to stop wanting more than that, or ping ponging all over the place after the tiniest, mildest of reprimands.

An anchor doesn’t work if it’s trying to pull away from you.

Monday, June 16

Day Off

Fretted myself into a fever, having spent the night compulsively forcing myself to wake up, and racking my brains for some way to not ever have to see Ruuel again, yet somehow not let anyone know that’s what I wanted. The dreams were all about trying to kill sheep, which I was very glad to stop as soon as I was aware of them.

When Ista Temen decided I should stay safely in bed and not do anything today I relaxed and slept for most of the day. I imagine there were a few frustrated greysuits, but it’s not as if they can’t get in without me now. I’m sure they’re having fun over in those snowstorms. With any luck tomorrow my legs will be improved enough that I can stand and no-one will need to carry me.

I’m tired of all this.

Tuesday, June 17

Say Nothing

Maze and Zee were my dawn shift babysitters – Third Squad and Squad One went to Kalasa via the Litara yesterday, so we’re down to two squads at Pandora. After Ista Temen had decided I was fit enough, Maze took me over to the amphitheatre for taxi duty. I asked Maze if I could stay upright today, but Ista Temen lowered my pain medication and let me try out standing, and I couldn’t cope with it. She says I’m making good progress, but it feels like I’ve been like this forever.

"We’re pushing to be sufficiently set up here to support the investigation without continuing to use you like this," Zee told me, after I’d shuffled everyone through to Kalasa and we’d gone out into the central square for another look.

"How’s the exploration going?"

"Still going."

Maze laughed at her tone of voice, and gave me a wry smile. "It’s an enormous place, and there’s simply so much. We’ve a site map now, but actually cataloguing and making sense of what we’ve found could take years. The Sight talents have marked places for early investigation, but the Lantarens recorded on paper, and it’s so fragile. We’ve wanted records so badly, and can hardly complain about having a library to sift through, but the need to do it slowly is remarkably frustrating." He paused. "Everywhere there are reminders that this was a school."

I hadn’t failed to notice the skeletons scattered about, nor the small size of many of them, but I had something else on my mind. "Have you been in near-space here?" I asked carefully.

"Can’t get to it. Even after you opened the door, the shielding keeps us out. And there’s a reason you’re asking that, isn’t there?" Maze isn’t slow.

"Fell asleep last time here. I can’t be sure, but…just had a vague impression that Kalasa looked different in near-space. Though I didn’t see much more than platform room."

"Different how?"

"Lights," I said vaguely. "Wasn’t here long enough good look. Also, I guess the Ddura can’t come here, because I haven’t heard any when in Kalasa, no matter how much fooling around on platform."

Maze thought this well worth looking into, but since I wasn’t the least bit tired right then he took me back to Pandora and told me not to have any midday naps so that they could try and recreate the experience this afternoon. He and Zee went to get some rest and Alay and Ketzaren took over babysitting, so I asked if they could help me have a shower. I’ve really lost all tolerance for being grubby, and the greysuits had told me that my nanotech bandages breathe and thus shouldn’t have scads of hot water run over them. Not until the burns are in better condition.

Coping with that took up a lot of the morning, and made all three of us rather giggly, but I felt a lot better afterwards. It was nice to see Alay laugh. She seems to open up a little on Muina, to talk more and hold her head higher. She loves watching the lake, but the daytime temperature’s dropping here again, so they decided not to let me sit outside, and instead we watched the latest aerial survey information together and then the latest episode of The Hidden War, which had aired right after we came to Muina. It focused on the main character training fake-me and barely being able to understand the garbled Taren, and not being able to talk about her assignment with the rest of her squad. We were having lunch when I had a channel request from Ruuel, something now possible even though he’s in Kalasa because the door’s been opened and more satellites are in place.

The request had a text opener of "Kalasa near-space," and when I accepted he said without preamble: "Should I interpret just a vague impression as very certain but you were cut short last time you tried to tell someone and now need a reason for the delay in mentioning it?"

It was difficult to tell if he was angry. And everything I thought of in reply made me sound like I was being a smartass, so eventually I just said: "Yes."

"What precisely did you see?"

"The walls have glowing patterns in them, like electrical circuitry. The platform has more. They change colours when people go near them. They reacted to the drones as well as to people. They changed to a different colour near me."

Not a vague impression at all. The uncharacteristically long silence before Ruuel responded told me nothing useful, then he said: "My error. An unnecessary lecture at that juncture."

I wonder how often he does something he considers a mistake. I’m willing to bet he hates being wrong, but always acknowledges it meticulously. And to be fair I had to admit that his lecture hadn’t been totally misplaced.

"Spirit of scientific discovery not exactly the initial reason I delayed waking myself up," I said, and dropped out of channel. Not making Ruuel have to deal with my crush is a kind of weird gentleman’s agreement we have. He clearly doesn’t want to respond to it. Whether because he’s in love with Taarel, or just doesn’t think I’m attractive, or whatever, the end result is still him carefully keeping me at a distance. So long as it’s not open it’s something handled relatively easily. But I’m finding it more difficult not to react to him, to want to push him to react to me, which is why he gave me that little reprimand – because I didn’t do what I was ordered just to prolong a dream about him. I’m making his job harder.

Time to go back now. I’m definitely going to be able to sleep – between Ista Temen’s fortifier, and my general tendency to be kitten-weak at irritating moments, I’ve barely been able to keep myself conscious to write this.

Friday, June 20

Hard Rest

The Kalasa sleeping experiment was both positive and negative. After ferrying some people and a pile more equipment to Kalasa I was established on the roof of a building one tier up from the flat central valley of the city. A number of seats and a couple of tables had been set on the main portico above the door, sheltered on three sides by higher sections of roof, but with an excellent view out over most of Kalasa. Ista Temen, very excited at being in Kalasa, and Maze and Zee sat with me, just generally chatting. The idea was to keep me feeling comfortable and unstressed and safe, and for me to pay attention to any oddnesses I observed if I had a dream of Kalasa, but to not feel pressured to have one and most particularly to wake myself up if I had a nightmare or felt threatened in any way.

It wasn’t very difficult to fall asleep, but I immediately started dreaming of Cruzatch climbing over the edge of the roof, and hurriedly had to wake myself up. I didn’t particularly want to go back to sleep after that, and instead sat talking with Maze and Zee about why I sometimes projected what I was seeing into real-space and sometimes only the sounds or sensations – if you could call tearing chunks out of my own legs a sensation – and sometimes I don’t seem to project anything at all. Maze said he did get a very strong sense of threat just before I woke myself up, but that it wasn’t as distinct and directional as it would be if Cruzatch really were about to attack. He didn’t quite say that he was detecting me as a threat, but I’m pretty sure that’s what he meant.

I dozed off again after a while, but again didn’t dream of coloured lights in Kalasa’s near-space. Instead I had a very interesting dream about Lantarens in Kalasa. The shield was down and the sky very blue and bright above a clean and sparkling city, with whole bridges and a very remarkable central waterfall which poured straight down from where the bridges met high above. There was a pool in the centre of the city between the platform buildings which is buried in rubble outside of dreams.

Hordes of people lined a major street all the way from the big entrance door to the central circle. Officials and families and guard-types and a few dressed like Inisar had been. And there were masses of kids, all of them dressed in a pale green-white and carrying huge armfuls of flowers, making a long procession from the entrance down to the central pool where they walked over this thin bridge through the water to give their flowers to the people waiting, who gave them a little crown of flowers in return. Those at the front of the lines looked to be around ten, and those toward the end were at least my age. Almost all of them were the same type as Inisar, Ruuel, Taarel and Selkie – very dark eyes and hair and warm golden skin – which I guess suggests their appearance is a reflection of their descent from the Lantarens.

There was music, too: a solemn, measured drumming and swirling, interweaving notes which mixed with the hushing roar of the fountain – pipes, I guess, both high and deep. I glanced about for the musicians, noticing that the Tarens and Kolarens were in my dream as well, very astonished, which made me realise I must be projecting. The Lantarens didn’t seem able to see them, but a few near the biggest groups of greysuits were peering confusedly about, as if they sensed something.

I would have liked to watch more – there was so much – but in the time it took for two little green-gowned children to get all soaked and give out their flowers, this great black rock came and sat on my chest and pulled me out of Kalasa and into a sleep which didn’t involve dreams or being aware of people around me or anything but nothingness. Kind of refreshing, really. When my mind finally came back, I felt physically blah, but still rested.

The first thing I noticed was that Zan was there. That made me open my eyes, surprised, and then I noticed how heavy my arms and legs felt. I was in my room at Pandora, despite Zan being there. She was watching me – no doubt the interface had told her I’d woken up – and smiled when I turned my head toward her. Zan’s really pretty when she stops looking all serious and guarded. She’s very fine-boned and delicate – not that I’d care to take her on in a fight.

"Welcome back," she said.

"Did I get injured?" I asked, discovering uncomfortable tubes. Then I looked at my interface and said: "When did it get to be the day after tomorrow? What happened?"

"You don’t remember?"

"Dreamed about Lantaren ceremony, but had to go to sleep. More to sleep."

"You exhausted yourself physically." Zan moved aside as Ista Deve (who I like less than Ista Temen because I can almost see her mentally composing research papers about me) started checking me over. I was awfully tired and incredibly hungry, for all that I seem to have been on a feeding drip. "Not a safe use of talent, though usually not fatal if you’re in good general condition."

Which doesn’t exactly describe me – though sleeping for two days has given my legs more of a chance to heal, and they no longer start throbbing if I don’t keep my feet elevated. Twelfth Squad is on medical leave as well: all but Zan and Sora Nels were injured when two stilts turned up in the middle of one of the more difficult rotations. Tahl Kiste is the worst, with lots of broken ribs and a crushed elbow. Although it sounded like actually surviving was a very good result, none of the teams like being invalided out, and rather than have her squad fret over it Zan suggested they assist with babysitting me.

After I had something to eat – confusedly trying to question Zan and respond to half of First and Fourth Squad wanting to talk to me – I slept again until about midnight and now I’m still feeling gluggy but not like lead weights are tied to my arms. Mara and Lohn were in the process of taking over from Maze and Zee so I could chat to them all for a while and hear their reaction to my overdone projection.

"Every historian on site in near-hysterics, practically gibbering," Lohn said. "But at least there were plenty of drones recording the projection and we could distract them with the logs."

Mara snorted. "And then trying to get them to make some sort of decision of whether they were staying or going, since anyone who was going had to come straight away since while you weren’t in a critical state, this kind of exhaustion weakens the system far too much for us not to take you somewhere warm and keep you there. We ended up having to station a second ship there to deal with the accommodation. Second, Third and Fourth are still on-site."

"And you are not going anywhere near Kalasa until you’re in full health," Maze added. "Even then, given how energy-greedy that projection was, those who want another glimpse into the past are due to be severely disappointed."

"Think it was really true then?" I asked.

"That or you have a remarkable imagination," Zee said, wrinkling her nose. "Did you have any awareness of what was going on beyond the visual?"

I hadn’t, other than thinking it beautiful, but enjoyed hearing what First Squad thought about it. Maze and Zee have gone to bed and I’m sitting on the couch in the babysitter’s room, snugged between Lohn and Mara while I write this. My legs feel much better and I’m allowed to walk to the bathroom by myself and everything.

Saturday, June 21

Botany

Spent the afternoon talking to Islen Dola, one of the senior greysuits trying to categorise a whole world’s worth of plants. He took me (and Zan and Lenton) on a tour of the greenhouse (conservatory?), where they’re growing samples of plants – mainly things that they think might be edible, but also other potentially useful sorts of plants. Between Tare and Kolar and Channa (which is a very rocky planet) and Dyess (even more ocean than Tare, with a mass of tropical islands), the greysuits know an awful lot about different sorts of plants and environments, but only Earth is tilted like Muina and experiences the same sort of seasonal shift.

Muina is really an incredibly fertile and inviting planet. Even its oceans are freshwater, with a couple of saltier lakes, and only a few places desert-dry and lacking lush plant life. All the planets the Muinans fled to seem horribly harsh and hostile by comparison. Even with their overpopulation issues, the Tarens didn’t leap to try and repopulate Dyess, or take Channa from the people living there because they’re far from ideal.

Although Islen Dola was partly just showing the conservatory off to me, he also wanted to pick my brains. As well as identifying any plants which even vaguely resembled Earth plants and saying what little I could about them, anything I could think of about seasons and plants could be useful. I told him about how Mum puts tulip bulbs in the refrigerator so they’ll flower properly, and about certain seeds in Australia needing a bushfire to trigger their germination. He found Australian bushfires thoroughly distracting.

Zan levitated me about, which always makes me feel idiotic, but even though I can walk for short distances they prefer me not to stay on my feet for long periods.

Sunday, June 22

Decorative

I’ve been getting to know Twelfth Squad better. The main surprise is Lenton, who though I’ve seen him being super-temperamental and who obviously felt he should be Twelfth Squad’s captain instead of Zan, turns out to be a pretty okay guy. Full of suppressed energy, but he focuses it on training and doesn’t go around being pointlessly nasty or confrontational – except when he loses his temper, which I expect is exactly why he’s not captain.

They’re rotating through the morning and afternoon babysitting shift, and Zan had her whole squad come down for practice this afternoon, even Kiste, who can’t do much more than sit with me and watch. Kiste told me a little about the fight which landed Twelfth on medical leave, and I got a good vibe from him about how Twelfth is feeling about Zan now. There’s a kind of confidence squads seem to develop in their captains. Even though these are people who were all raised together, they’ve decided to trust Zan’s judgment, to accept her orders in bad situations. I could never be a captain. I’d loathe having to prove myself to people, and I’d stress out completely with the responsibility of making decisions for other people. Not to mention the whole not being able to fight my way out of a wet paper bag issue.

I’ve taken to wearing ordinary clothes instead of my uniform, but the temperature dropped enough outside today that I compromised and wore my uniform and my new jacket over the top. It’s a parchment-shade fake leather thing with black strips around the edges and I’ve been working on drawing a pattern of flowers similar to Celtic knot work but looser which I’d seen on the main doors to Kalasa. It took me ages to map it out right using pencils, and my big nikko pen was running dry toward the end of me inking just the main part in, but I think it looks pretty good. Maze says it’s a big improvement over pictures of experimental animals.

I was glad to realise today that I don’t really have two whole squads (or a squad and a half) devoted purely to babysitting me. In between watching me sleep, First and now Twelfth have been assisting the exploration teams out harvesting specimens, and even with preparing areas for construction. They’re really serious about this being the current capital of Muina. Pandora will eventually bracket the old town completely, although it’s a long way from that right now.

No near-future plans to expand down to the stream with the otters, I’m glad to say.

Monday, June 23

Sleet

Ista Temen took my bandages off this morning so my legs could air. The main difference is that nothing is oozing any more, but my skin is crinkled and seamed and the burned bits are silvery and feel extremely weird when I poke at them. Kiste, who was on morning shift with Dess Charn, said he’s going to have to stop complaining about his elbow. That’s exaggeration – his bones were crushed and before Twelfth came to Pandora he’d spent days having surgery on it and even with Taren nanotechnology it will be weeks before it’s close to useable and probably months before he’s fully recovered. I’m allowed to walk somewhat longer distances, and don’t feel quite so much of a cripple any more. Not that I’m happy to have amazingly ugly legs. The cosmetic work will take a couple of months, because they’re more interested in getting me healthy than making sure I look good in a dress.

Ista Temen has scaled back my pain meds all the way. She says she’ll give me something if I need help sleeping, but that if I want to walk about I need to know when I’ve pushed it too far. I also have these mild stretching exercises I have to do – moving my feet and lower legs about while sitting down.

My babysitter shifts always have at least one girl (Dess Charn this morning, Zan this afternoon, Alay and Ketzaren this evening) and at least one person with Combat Sight. Now that I’m not so sleepy half the day, I feel less tolerant of having two people in constant attendance, but they at least are willing to chat and to not be in Ena-mode. Not that Zan’s not incredibly proper still, just not at full alert.

It rained all morning, this icy near-hail, and after it stopped everything froze. So I can walk, but I can also fall over really easily. Lohn and Mara are here now, and we’re going to watch some movies and maybe play some of these virtual world interface games.

Tuesday, June 24

Resolution

A day for gabbing about sheep, and then other Earth farm animals with another of the greysuits. I always end up feeling amazingly ignorant of my own world in these conversations.

They’ve decided I’m recovered enough to risk me going back to Kalasa tomorrow. Not to play taxi or to have any dreams – they don’t want me to attempt any dreams till I’m a little more recovered, not even training. Since I haven’t been having any lucid dreams lately, and theoretically have enough control to wake myself up if I dream lucidly, I’m under orders to not push the development of my talents until further notice.

Tomorrow I’m assigned to First and Fourth to scout out which of the platforms go where. Fifteen buildings, fifteen platforms, but we’ve only discovered nine pattern-roof villages (and Arenrhon, which has its own platform). And when I was told about that my heart gave this huge thump and then I had to spend time reassuring Maze that no the idea didn’t distress me at all.

Ever since the Kalasa dream, when I’ve woken up I haven’t been aware of Ruuel’s absence. I’d decided this was a positive sign, that I was accepting the big no he hasn’t had to say out loud, and have been very careful not to write about him, look at any logs involving him, or think about him if I could help it. If I did think about him, I’d very deliberately imagine him kissing Taarel, remind myself that he’s made it absolutely clear he doesn’t want to get close to me, and tell myself that I was so happy I was finally getting over him.

Such a lie.

I had an unplanned nap this afternoon and dreamed of Ruuel. He was standing alone in the dark – levitating just above the snow – watching the horizon. I could see him clearly, even though there didn’t seem to be any lights, and his face was very still and peaceful.

I made myself wake up. It wasn’t a projecting dream, but I’m not sure if the monitors would have picked up use of my Sight talent. And if I’d looked at him any longer I might have reached out and tried to touch him. I’ve decided I can want him as much as I want, but no more little lapses. Nothing which makes him have to deal with my feelings, or even think about them. But I’m not going to stop enjoying looking at him.

Wednesday, June 25

World Travel

An early start to today’s explore the platforms assignment, since we were trying to mesh together First Squad, Fourth Squad and me all being awake at different times. I wasn’t too tired – I’d gone to bed early, woken up in the middle of the night and written in my diary, and slept fairly solidly till Zee woke me a while before Pandora dawn. It was very freezy outside, so I took my beanie, but opted against my jacket since I knew that at least the desert platform would make me wish I was wearing less not more.

I gather that on particularly stormy days the wind chill at Kalasa has been so icy that they increased the amount of nanoliquid going into the Setari uniforms to allow for extra insulation and for wearing of head coverings as well. Mara showed me the option for the head covering and I burst into laughter because instead of the balaclava I was expecting, it resembles cloth wound above and below the eyes and now they really do look like they’re space ninjas. The nanosuits are really adaptable – they can even create goggles if they want.

Maze hauled along a half-dozen drones to place at each of the sites which didn’t have a drone already, and set them in the central circle of Kalasa where Fourth Squad was waiting. Afternoon there, of course, and it looked like the snowstorms had let up, but Maze was being all mission-mode and efficient, so I didn’t ask if I could go look outside at the construction.

"Along with placing drones, we’ll be performing a short survey of each site, known and unknown. Blind entry protocol applies." Maze signalled us toward the first of the platform buildings.

Since Alay and Ketzaren were my minders for the day, I asked Ketzaren what blind entry protocol was and she explained that it was how the squads behave when going through gates in the Ena, except when everyone has to go through at once instead of waiting for the leaders to signal them through. With platform travel it meant that people without Combat Sight were positioned toward the centre, with the Combat Sight/speed talents distributed evenly around the edges. My problems with contact with too many people at once makes this a little awkward, but they worked it out by having Alay on the edge, the drone beside me, and Ketzaren on the inside. Levitation helps a lot with getting me on and off platforms without everyone having to edge out of my way.

We went anti-clockwise around the circle of platforms, and spent the day on a tour of very disparate parts of Muina. Six pattern-roof villages, one platform which didn’t work, and two cities. The cities were a bit of a surprise. Neither of them were Nurioth, but the drones and satellites allowed us to pinpoint them easily enough and they turned out to be the two next-largest cities other than Nurioth. I particularly liked the first of the cities we went to, which meandered beneath this incredible forest of absolutely massive trees – redwood tall. It was by far the most ruined of all the sites, tree roots and trunks displacing what they hadn’t shattered, and full of bird song and the chirring of insects.

Not much in the way of Ionoth, since these were all locations which anchored Ddura, but a few native creatures like the border collies weren’t very pleased to see us and snarled and grumbled but stopped short of attacking.

Since everyone was in official patrol mode, there wasn’t much in the way of chatting or exclamations. The one exception was when we went to the desert location where I’d been stranded. It was painfully hot there, stifling in the sand-clogged platform room, and worse above. I could only be glad it hadn’t been quite this bad when I’d been dragging trees about. I sensibly retracted the sleeves and neck of my uniform even before we’d climbed onto the platform at Kalasa, and Maze and Ruuel told their squads to follow my lead. Even so, the heat hit us like a hammer and everyone was dripping before we were even out in the sun. The squads still punctiliously did the same amount of surveying, though there was fortunately little to see except the blackened remains of my arrow, frayed around the edges where windblown sand had already started to swallow it.

"I just can’t believe you did that in this heat," Lohn said, breaking out of professional mode as we paused to stare at charcoal and sand. "I feel like my lungs are cooking with every breath."

"Is hotter now," I said, shrugging so I could pretend I wasn’t feeling tight-chested remembering. "And I waited till late afternoon. Worst bit was trying to start the fire beforehand." Although, really, I think the worst bit was when I got lost on the way back after lighting the arrow. There was just blackness everywhere until I turned around, and I felt so small and confused and overwhelmed.

"Enough for the day," Maze said, and took us back to the platform without another word. We immediately froze half to death from temperature difference and I was made to drink horrible fortifying drinks and have a medical exam. We’ll finish the rest tomorrow. Everyone seems to be convinced I’m going to have screaming nightmares tonight, and I have Taarel and Sefen from Third as first shift babysitters.

I was very good about Ruuel, not self-indulgent or annoying in any way. I only properly looked at him when he spoke, which was exactly twice, and so long as he’s not the person whose job it is to haul me about, I should be fine.

Thursday, June 26

Pieces of Sphinx

I did have nightmares last night, but they were nightmare nightmares – no projection involved in real-space or the Ena, and none of the certainty of awareness which is my completely unpredictable Sight talent. I dreamed I was lost in a dark maze, and the only door I could find was being held shut from the other side. Taarel woke me up, her hand on my forehead, but didn’t push me to tell her what I’d been dreaming.

It snowed like crazy overnight, and Pandora looked spectacular in the morning, mounded with fluffy brand-new snow. Eeli loved it, even though she’d already been dealing with the snow out at Kalasa. I swear if Maze hadn’t come down to collect us she would have romped through it like a puppy. It snowed all day, so that when we came back it was piled up against the door of my building. Everyone in Pandora is learning things about snow and the one we learned today was that we really need something to wipe or scrape the snow off in the airlock part of the door rather than track it into the corridor or the inner rooms, where it promptly melts into chilly puddles.

The last few platforms brought no surprises – just pattern-roof towns. And no Arenrhon, even though there’s a platform there. They’re not sure if the non-working platform is meant to link there, or if it’s possible that Arenrhon is on a different network. All but one of the Ddura recognised us, which suggests that there’s maybe five Ddura altogether, each patrolling three platforms. That’s the current theory, anyway.

We had lunch at Kalasa, along with Squad One and Second Squad – a great big group of us sitting in the central circle using some of the rubble as chairs. The captains went off with the senior bluesuit, Tsen Sloe, and Islen Duffen and Islen Tezart, who have been transferred to Kalasa from Arenrhon. Everyone else talked shop about the Ionoth they’d been encountering on the island, and also back on their respective planets. This thrilled me so much I fell asleep and dreamed of interesting lights again. Everywhere. I was trying to work out if there was any rhyme or reason when Nalaz pointed out to everyone that I was asleep and Mara reached to wake me up.

"No, wait," I said, which didn’t work, but I tried again and got the "Wait" to be audible and Mara stopped with her hand on my shoulder. I knew they’d consult the captains, so busily kept looking about and was ready for them when all four captains set down in front of me.

I considered staying asleep and projecting again, but it felt like using a pulled muscle, so I woke myself up instead, blinked, and said: "Sorry, really hard to stay awake after drinking those fortifier things. Was seeing those lights again. It’s–" I paused, struggling with the magnitude of what I wanted to describe. "Don’t think I can describe that properly, but did see that circular building sends out pulses occasionally and everything seems to answer it." I pointed toward a building halfway up the opposite slope, then rubbed my temple irritably. "Think I haven’t been projecting in my sleep lately because I can’t. It’s like that bit of me is too tired."

Maze shifted from a faint frown to the abstract expression of someone looking things up over the interface. "Only a preliminary view there," he said, and glanced at Ruuel, who immediately signalled his squad and went for a look. Maze, Grif and Shaf sat down and Maze said: "Even a bad description is a start." He brought all the squads into a mission channel, along with the three senior officers the captains had been talking to.

I wrinkled my nose – it really wasn’t something which is easy to put into words – then said: "All of the whitestone has lights in it. Bands of squiggles which branch out – a bit like veins. Dim and really indistinct most of the time, but when anyone goes near it, it reacts and gets brighter. Even these fallen bits." I glanced at the chunks of broken bridge and fountain I’d been resting against. "It reacts with a different colour to me. Twice a pulse of light went out from the circular building, washing over whole city, and everywhere where there are people, it sends a little pulse back. Even these broken bits, for all they don’t seem connected."

Islen Tezart, sounding wholly delighted, asked: "Do you mean these lights are made up of symbols? Writing?"

"Not really. Will try and draw." Which I did, using one of the interface drawing applications, which I’m even worse at using than a mouse-operated thing. It looked like a four year-old had tried to draw a flock of boomerangs and pieces of string flying south for the winter. "Not even close," I said apologetically.

"Visual," said Ruuel, streaming what he was seeing to us. The building was one big empty room with a domed ceiling, an empty walkway/border around the edges, and a huge and utterly gorgeous mosaic covering the rest of the floor. Similar imagery to the entrance to Kalasa, it was all flowers and flowing branches, stylised animals and lakes and streams. A picture of the world.

Ruuel began switching through Sights. First the room went all shadowy, and I thought I saw a hint of movement, and then it was like the mosaic became three-dimensional, lifting into a hemisphere of floral shapes and slinking, flitting, drowsing animals. And then flattened down again, and became very like what I’d been seeing: streaming particles of light, particularly centring on two circular areas in the mosaic, one faded yellow and one greyish.

"Considerably more than decorative," Ruuel said. "Function–" He paused, and I suspected he and Halla were talking over their impressions out of channel. Even though he has more Sights than Halla, Ruuel always consults with her on her impressions for things like this. I’m not sure if it’s because she’s stronger with Place Sight, or if the talent is just so variable that it’s like fitting together fragmentary puzzle pieces in hopes of making a picture. "The most distinct impression is one of a place of annunciation, of being judged."

There was a exceptionally boring period following this where bunches of the Setari and greysuits yakked at each other and installed machines and made cautious attempts to work out what the mosaic was for and how to make it react. I stayed where I was, with Lohn and Mara for company, and worked on my Muinan animals project, which was something I could chat to them about. But eventually everyone gave in and decided to poke Devlin at the mosaic to see what happened. They’re much less keen to use me for testing since my first excursion to Kalasa, but it’s easy to spot the situations where it’s going to happen.

The mosaic did seem to react to me, when they plunked me on the yellow circle. The machines picked up a surge in power. But then there was another short age of faffing around, trying to get me to make something, anything, happen. Lots of bright ideas from the greysuits, mostly based around doing the same thing I’d done with the platforms – except theoretically to a higher security level. None of that seemed even remotely inclined to work.

"You don’t have any suggestions of your own, Caszandra?" Isten Notra, observing over the interface, asked.

"Trial by combat?" I asked, looking very doubtfully at Ruuel, who had been patiently standing on the other circle for what seemed an eternity. He looked down, which I suspect was to hide how ludicrous he found that idea. I sighed. "Don’t see why trying to start with me. If judging, shouldn’t other person be proving themselves worthy? Kalasa already seems to know what is my place in this world."

I was just being frustrated, but Ruuel looked up, eyes widening. "Phrase that as a question," he said – ordered, it was very much an imperative command.

It took me a moment, since I had already been asking a question. But then I twigged, and said: "What would you be to Muina?"

He didn’t answer out loud, but dropped his gaze back to the mosaic, and then closed them, going very still. Everyone else in the room shut up, almost seeming to hold their breath. I’ve no idea what he was thinking, what he told Kalasa he wanted to be, but I guess it approved. Just for a moment there, I swear the mosaic shifted. I couldn’t spot the difference, but I had to wonder if another tiny tile had been added.

After that everyone got really cheerful. Particularly me when a bit of experimentation showed that Kalasa now responded to Ruuel much as it does me: he could activate the platforms and the mosaic. And Maze then Mara then Islen Tezart quickly followed suit. That’s the best news I’ve had for ages. No more playing taxi or being poked at stuff for me. Not everyone passes though – which naturally upsets those who don’t – particularly Islen Duffen, who looked like she’d been slapped. I did notice, from the few who failed before I was taken back to Pandora, that it mainly seems to be people who aren’t comfortable with Muina itself – being under so much sky, and with sticky plants and bugs and animals all uncontrolled and in every direction. KOTIS has been having to return a reasonable percentage of staff back to Tare just because they can’t cope with Muina.

No-one seems to want to talk about what being judged feels like, either. It seems it’s a bit more involved than making some kind of life goals statement. None of the Setari have failed so far, but given the squads involved, I’m not surprised. I was glad all the Kolaren Setari managed. They’ve stopped looking quite so distracted since the news brought word that matters had improved on Kolar, but today was the first time Shaf has smiled at me since his government tried to buy me.

All I’ve got scheduled is a morning medical appointment tomorrow. I’m willing to bet they’re going to send me back to Tare again.

Friday, June 27

Ice

Zan and Lenton were my post-breakfast babysitters. They’d already been to Kalasa earlier that morning and passed, and so were subdued and thoughtful – I couldn’t tell if it was mainly because it was their first time in Kalasa, or if it was the test. The most I could get anyone to describe what it’s like was Zee, who told me it left her feeling very exposed, like something very large had opened her up and taken a look inside.

Given the whole idea of the planet as a living entity, I can see why this disconcerts them all so much. They’re not sure if what’s judging them is the planet, or just some device of the Lantarens. I’d love to know why I didn’t have to be judged, but I’m glad not to have to try. It would be mortifying to fail.

My medical appointment was over by mid-morning, and Zan told me she had permission for us to go outside Pandora, which I thought a nice surprise. I immediately suggested we go to see whether the otters were still there – I’m pretty sure otters don’t move about to avoid Winter.

As we whizzed effortlessly along the lakeshore I was thinking about those first two weeks on Muina, and all that walking. Trying to picture having to do it in my school uniform in snow. Even in the enhanced Setari uniform and my coat and beanie, flying through the chill made me uncomfortably aware of how little chance I would have had. And then I noticed that we’d flown right past the otter stream. I looked over at Zan in confusion and she smiled (so rare for her to smile) and nodded at the ground.

Six squads of Setari make for a lot of people. Against a huge empty field of snow their black uniforms made them look like a flock of crows, with Squad One’s green and black a distinct sub-group. Zan set us down in the centre, where the captains were all clustered together with their squads just a little back.

I stared from Zan to Maze, who said: "You wanted an epic fight with snow?"

It’s not often that they do something which so totally surprises me. I said "Really?" on a note of disbelief, then blushed, and looked about at them all being amused at me, then back at Maze. And blushed more and said: "Thank you," and tried not to embarrass myself by bursting into tears.

He gave me one of those super-spectacular smiles. "We’ve been trying to work out what sort of rules would apply. Is there a standard for these games?"

I seriously doubted that standing in the middle of the field shrieking with laughter and madly hurling handfuls of snow at each other would work for Setari. "Not really," I said. Thinking of Dad’s paintball games I added: "Could each mark out a base and do rule that if you get hit, you can’t participate until next round, and have to wait in team who hits you base until no-one left. Or do a capture the flag where the team in custody of the flag at the end of limit wins. In that, if you get hit you have to return to base, but then can join back in straight away."

"Either of those would work," Maze said, glancing at Grif. "Perhaps one capture in current squads, and then a second round on an individual points basis?"

"What will we use as a flag?" Grif asked.

"Isn’t that obvious?" Nils, looking highly amused, patted me on the head. "A flag which can fight back."

"I just throw snowballs at random people?" I asked.

"At all of us. If you manage to hit any of the squad trying to capture you before they get into grabbing distance, they’ll all have to go back to their base. And any squad who wants to capture you has to hit you with a ball of snow. Since I’m sure you won’t think this half as entertaining if we scrupulously avoid so much as mussing your hair." He plucked off my beanie and pulled it on, dark curls framing his face. It really suited him – totally smexy. "When you’re captured, you can aim at attacking squads, but not your current captors."

Something which encouraged the Setari to not baby me seemed a good idea, and the captains quickly settled the final details. Combat Sight and Speed were allowed because they’re practically impossible not to use, but no other talents except Levitation or Telekinesis for carrying the flag. The interface could be used for communication which everyone would hear, but not for showing the location of enemies. Rather than a time limit, winning meant getting me back to their base without losing me. Maze quietly told me not to overtax my legs, then brought everyone into one general channel, and airlifted me into the middle of a vast white expanse. And, after double-checking that I was good to go, left me there.

I was at the crest of a small hill, with only a leafless tree and clumps which I realised were nearly buried snow-covered bushes for company. It was, though of course didn’t tell any of the Setari, totally not what I’d meant by an epic snowball fight. I’d been picturing a repeat of a family trip, just with First Squad: a shambolic and silly battle where everyone got covered in snow and there was no real point to it all. But I was really touched that they’d go so far for me, and had managed to coordinate all the squads on Muina – presumably they think it’s safe to leave the construction on Kalasa with just greensuits on guard. And I was really surprised Ruuel was willing to participate, since he stays away from competitive stuff, but I guess he’d consider it good for his squad’s morale. I’d avoided looking particularly at him, but a quick review of my log showed him being the only captain not smiling at my reaction, just his usual detached and alert mode.

Bet he wanted his squad to win, though.

I decided I’d be happy if I could hit someone, anyone, before being captured. While the squads worked out equidistant locations for their bases, and marked the boundaries, I debated hiding versus making a stand and decided I might as well avoid stressing out my legs. We were a bit higher than Pandora, and the snow was deeper. I’d sunk straight past my knees and by the time I’d finished scrunching out a little bunker and building up the walls, it was waist high. I sat down so I wouldn’t be visible and made a pile of snowballs while listening to the chatter over the interface.

They weren’t being all deadly serious, fortunately. Lohn and Nils kept up a patter of shit-talk aimed at each other, and anyone who was hit usually said something on the lines of good shot, or laughed or groaned. Running in snow was also proving a new challenge. It was a while before anyone got anywhere near me – so far as I can tell everyone first tried to ambush the squad nearest to them, before making their way toward me. I certainly had a nice pile of snowballs by the time anyone came close.

Three teams came within range of my senses at almost the same time (I was shamelessly using my own Sight). Second Squad, Squad One and Third Squad. They were all approaching from different directions, but Squad One and Third Squad attempted to cut each other off, giving Second a chance to rush my fort.

They were coming in a tight bunch, which was a big mistake. I waited till they were almost on me then, lying relaxed in my bunker, simply lobbed as many snowballs as possible in a high arc into the middle of them. Combat Sight saved some, but the groans and laughter prompted me to pop my head up to survey the damage – Nils and Keer Charal brushing snow off and the whole squad having to return back to base. Nils gave me back my beanie as a prize, which nearly distracted me from Third Squad and Squad One, who both decided to take opportunistic shots. I fell over my pile of snowballs trying to avoid the shots, and then dissolved into giggles when Nils took one of them in the face.

"Nils dodge worse than I do," I said, trying to control my laughter enough to lob snowballs in something like the right direction for Third Squad and Squad One.

"Depends who’s aiming," he said with a super-sexy grin, wiping snow out of his eyes before following his squad back down the slope.

Third Squad and Squad One managed to destroy each other, so that by the time I poked my head out of my fort, only Eeli was left to fight. Eeli’s better at dodging than me, and her smile was at nuclear hyper-wattage for the rest of the day after making first capture.

Taarel, looking highly amused, took the rest of Third Squad on a slightly different course back to base so that they couldn’t confuse anyone coming after Eeli and me, and Eeli – huge-eyed and vibrating with excitement, but keeping very quiet – had me go ahead of her on a somewhat circuitous route in the same direction, using the cover of half-buried bushes. Since she’s not telekinetic, we couldn’t move very quickly, but the snow was broken up enough by then that it wouldn’t be obvious which direction we’d gone. Combat Sight only shows threats, and the other squads weren’t allowed to use Path Sight, so I actually had more of an advantage tracking than the Setari.

First Squad effortlessly took me away from Eeli – though I did almost hit Lohn before Zee got me – but then there was a really tangled battle between fragmented bits of squads returning from their various bases, which First Squad managed to survive losing only Maze and Alay.

Not letting your squad get fragmented was obviously an important tactic, as First and then Fourth proved. Just as First was approaching their base, Fourth ambushed – as much as you can ambush anyone with Combat Sight. Mori got me hard in the back as part of a relentless barrage which took out Ketzaren and Lohn. Mara immediately tried to capture me back, only to have her ball seemingly explode mid-air. I only realised what had happened when Zee’s attack went the same way, intercepted by another snowball.

"Nice tactic," Zee said, shaking her head at Ruuel as she picked ice out of her hair.

"Be prepared to have it used against you," Mara added with a grin, and waved at me before they both headed toward their far-too-close base.

Maze was already on his way back, and Ruuel signalled his squad to hurry up, before ducking down and blurring on ahead along a different route. He was smiling. Just ever-so-faintly. I suppose maybe it was more that he looked extra-alert and alive, with his eyes open wide, but definitely enjoying himself. The rest of his squad certainly was: even Sonn was bright-eyed. If Fourth’s base hadn’t been on the opposite side of the hill they might have won, but they ran up against Third, Squad One and Second, who held off ambushing each other in favour of taking Fourth down. With First coming up behind, there was an inevitable, suitably epic stand-off. I ended up tagged by Nalaz, and he and Taranza hastily hauled me off while Shaf guarded their retreat. And then Twelfth Squad pounced, having waited for the critical moment when almost everyone was heading back to their own bases.

It was great seeing how proud Twelfth Squad were of Zan. Even though half of them are injured, it was her strategy which had let them win. And so funny watching Zan being so very correct, but with her cheeks so pink, as the other captains congratulated her.

After that we had an every-man-for-himself game of hide-and-seek, where we tallied every time we hit someone, and every time we got hit. Ruuel won this effortlessly, which I don’t think surprised anyone, although Nalaz and Mara came close at stages. Afterwards we all went and had a big, hot lunch and everyone looked so relaxed and happy and of course I fell asleep.

Lohn and Mara are being my babysitters at the moment, though I’ve left them alone in the other room because I got the impression they wanted to snuggle. It was a really good day. I wish I could think of some way of thanking them properly in return.

Toward the end of the hide-and-seek, I’d headed off to one side to get a bit of a rest and make a stock of snowballs. For ease I was lying on my back, deep in the snow, watching the sky growing greyer. And Ruuel came near me. I felt him before he knew who I was – he was following my tracks I think. But something must have made him realise. Because he stopped, and then changed direction away from me.

"Too easy?" I said loudly. I was really angry, abruptly understanding just why Kajal is so infuriated by Ruuel’s refusal to fight him. And then I was nervous because Ruuel stopped, and came back toward me.

I didn’t try and throw snowballs – I knew he’d dodge easily – just lay there and tried not to be too wide-eyed as stood directly above me, giving me an incredibly foreshortened view of leg and his face. He certainly wasn’t smiling that time. My heartbeat went through the roof because it wasn’t the efficient squad captain looking down at me, but the person I’d glimpsed during his fight with Kajal, arrogant and annoyed. For that moment he was entirely himself with me.

Then he dropped a snowball directly on my face and walked off while I gasped and choked. But I had to laugh, and said: "Guess so!" as he walked away. I enjoy the oddest things.

After I’d had my nap, Maze told me that I’ll be heading back to Tare tomorrow. First and Second Squad’s coming with me, and Mara’s going to be whipping me into shape, and Zee overseeing my Sight and projection training. I don’t know if Ruuel recommended the change of trainers, or if it’s just they want the Sights squads here on Muina.

I’m in an accepting kind of mood about it all, like I’m starting to be able to let him go.

Saturday, June 28

Fly-over

I spent a nice relaxed morning with Zan and Dess building a snowman and then constructing some snow armchairs and making amateurish snow sculptures. Telekinetics are definitely very handy to have when you’re trying to shift a lot of snow about. Zan’s got a real flair for sculpture, too, and I was pleased that indulging me gave her a chance to do something she obviously enjoyed. Twelfth is going to remain assigned to Muina until further notice – their injuries don’t prevent even Kiste from fighting, and they should be fine so long as they’re not facing large numbers of Ionoth. And, thanks to the strength of her Telekinetic talent, Zan’s got a lot of construction work in her near future.

We’re on the Litara heading back now, having narrowly avoided a bunch of civilians who were off-loaded at Pandora for an overnight visit along with, so far as I could tell, the fittings they’ll be using in the new building that’s been going up. It’s the first time KOTIS has allowed anyone on Muina who was there just to look and exclaim: a one-off PR exercise for a bunch of VIPs, reporters, and contest winners come to experience the home world. There’ll be another group from Kolar in a few days, and no more for a while. Pandora’s getting larger every day, but KOTIS is very reluctant to spend resources on tourists. Maze said there’s a massive disagreement over the question of settling instead of exploring, mainly because of the Ddura. He doesn’t want families, kids, here, but there’s an argument that Muina might soon be the safest place on any of the planets.

I hadn’t known any of this when watching the Litara settling on the lake. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have stayed sitting outside when the shuttle went past on its way to the amphitheatre. KOTIS personnel don’t as a rule point at you and wave. Fortunately Maze came down and collected me before any of them were finished at the platform. I don’t think much of a career as a zoo exhibit.

It’s very weird to me that I think of people as civilians.

Snug

So nice to be back in my own rooms. So nice not to have two people making sure they’re always within twenty feet of me.

Ghost showed up within half an hour of me being back, purring like mad. She missed me, or whatever my enhancement does for her.

It made me wonder about Muina v Tare in terms of home. I guess Muina would be as much home as here if I had my own quarters, not a glorified medical monitoring facility. Given the choice I’d probably live on Muina, just because there’s so much more outside, but I’m feeling very comfy and settled here, curled into my window seat with Ghost purring on my lap.

First and Second Squad are reverting to nightmare watch instead of babysitting, which is fine with me, especially since I’m not having too much trouble at the moment with my dreams. I think the manifestation part of me is still recovering. Tomorrow everyone has a day off, then I’m back on training.

Sunday, June 29

Nice means precise

The Ruuel-not-there sensation has come back, but otherwise non-eventful dreaming. I spent a long time in the bath this morning, looking at my legs and being amazed at how ugly they are, and thinking back over the fifteen seconds or so that it took me to get them in this condition.

It’s really hard to go there. Waking like that scared the hell out of me, and it also hurt worse than anything else I’ve managed to do to myself. But waking aware of Ruuel’s absence really brought it back to me. If I’d been less freaked out, I’d think about that night all the time, since I spent who knows how long with my arms in a death-lock around his waist and my face pressed into his stomach. He kept one hand on my shoulder and the other on the back of my head, and didn’t even wipe the blood off his face until Mara came and he got me to clutch her instead. And it’s only from looking at the log later that I know that he was grey-faced and sweating, battered by the raw terror I was blasting.

Even if it was just because I’m his assignment, I’ll always remember him doing that. And saying my name correctly. I have this increasing collection of special memories of things he’s done, including dropping a snowball on my face, but my accepting attitude seems to be holding. My crush makes his job harder, a job which could easily get him killed, and I think seeing that has given me the impetus I needed to step back.

I also caught up on the latest episode of The Hidden War. It was the confrontation scene, where Lenton discovered Zan wasting her time giving me baby-level training, and all the squads are introduced to me. Looks like Maze didn’t put a word-for-word log of the explanation of my lab rat, which only meant the scriptwriters happily made up a scene where Lastier was quite directly insulting. There was also a scene which I wasn’t present for, where he was being very smug and superior and insulting to the other squad captains, but also brilliantly competent and incisive.

I wonder if that PR person had a thing about Ruuel, or it was just script decisions which are making them put the knife in. Lastier is close enough to be recognisable, but terribly distorted.

Monday, June 30

Irresolution

Just physical training today, and that mainly in the weights room, since my legs aren’t quite up to training which involves impact, and Mara says I need to work on upper body strength anyway. A couple of squads (Eighth, Tenth) passed through during the two long sessions we had, making me feel terribly self-conscious about my scars, since we were in the shorts and singlet arrangement. They were very good about not staring though. The rest of First Squad came and joined us for the session after lunch and demonstrated how much of a wimp I am. By the time Mara was done with me I was a limp noodle.

She’s booked me in for swimming tomorrow morning, which I’m allowed to do alone so long as I don’t dive and are feeling up to it. Tomorrow afternoon after they’re back from rotation, Zee will be resuming my Sights and other-weird-things-Cass-does training. If, that is, I can actually move tomorrow.

There’s a new news frenzy sparked by all the tourists who’ve returned from Muina. Interviews with KOTIS staff and the contest winners and lots of shots of what Pandora looks like right now and tours of the buildings there and talk about making Pandora self-supporting. And KOTIS used their visit to officially release not only news and images of Kalasa, but to take a select few there and to explain the use of the platforms (although not, as yet, exactly how you get to be able to use the platforms). Other than a lot of extreme impatience at the time-frame of more civilians being able to go there, it’s all been pretty joyous and exuberant news.

They’ve named the settlement at Kalasa Kaszandra, which is something I find uncomfortable and highly ironic, given the inescapable doom aspects of my name. And of course the reporters managed to get hold of a whole bunch of anonymous gossip about me while they were talking to people at Pandora, and there’s images of the snowmen and snowchairs Zan, Dess and I had built. And someone told them I’d been injured (mysteriously), and about how protective the Setari were of me (devoted) and whole bunches of embarrassing stuff which is very much not about me at all, but this little mythos which is being built up around me (wise beyond her years). No-one mentions the amount of sulking I get through.

I wonder if Tare has an equivalent of the tall poppy syndrome, and after all these unlikely stories about me being brave and wonderful they’ll recast me for the feet of clay role. It’s not that I don’t think they should probably be glad I showed up and unlocked their world, but I hate this increasing tendency to build me up into something I’m not: improbably virtuous and clever and brave. The life I’m living is amazing, and I’m not unaware that I’ve caused a massive change to happen – I did name the settlement Pandora for that exact reason – but they’ve all tended to be things that have just happened while I was stumbling about trying not to die. And when I re-read my diaries I just sound increasingly whiney and edging toward certified nutjob. I’ve spent the last few months falling apart and moaning about it.

I was really glad for Mara’s training today, because there’s no hint of fragile little half-insane princess must be placated when she makes me do an extra ten repetitions. I’m going to go along with that attitude, and throw myself back into my rather neglected schoolwork, and that animal identification assignment. Every month that’s gone by since I was rescued, I seem to have become less stable and lost more privacy. Yeah, I’ve had good reasons for freaking out, and a lot of the guarding has been necessary. But I don’t like myself this way, and I’m looking to change how I’ve been behaving. To take comfort from the people trying to support me, but to get back to standing on my own two feet.

July

Tuesday, July 1

Map of the brain

Swimming was okay. It’s been long enough, I guess, and it did help loosen up all my complaining muscles. I hope eventually it’ll be fun again.

Zee took me back out to Keszen Point, which had obviously reverted to being a warehouse during my absence, since the boxes were different boxes. Ista Chemie was very interested in the Kalasa projection, rumours of which are already rife on the interface, and also the fact that I feel like the manifestation bit of me is still tired. We started out small – another mug, in fact – and though I can picture a mug in my head very easily, I couldn’t make one appear, full of cocoa or not. And I don’t seem to be causing anything at all to happen in near-space. This is nothing but a good thing from my point of view.

We moved on to a series of visualisations, measuring my energy output and my brain’s electrical activity when trying to see a distinct series of rooms of around the same size at increasing distances around Tare. And then a visualisation of a fictional place for contrast. It was a pretty productive session, both for clearly identifying which part of my brain is responsible for the Sight talent, and for me to become more aware of the separate mechanisms. I kept accidentally trying to manifest things, and I could feel myself not able to, and eventually I began to anticipate the twinge and deliberately avoid it. So the Kalasa manifestation cost me a couple of days of unconsciousness, but gave me a little progress in return. And a chance to not be so worried about accidentally making monsters.

This kind of training will be every second day from now on, with nothing but physical training on First Squad’s off-rotation days until I’m fit and healthy. Only then, and if they’ve gained a proper understanding of the limits and costs of my talent set, will they even consider poking me at Muina again.

Zee was very tired by the time we were heading back, and I made jokes about carrying her to her quarters. I told her, as we rode the elevator, that I had been trying in vain to think of a way to thank everyone for my snowball fight, but she thought this tremendously funny, and told me the snowball fight was them thanking me, and besides they’d all enjoyed themselves.

Then I asked her didn’t she think my beanie had suited Nils and she tweaked a strand of my hair and told me she’d make sure Mara left me too exhausted to remember what a beanie was.

I much prefer training with the Setari to being babysat.

Wednesday, July 2

Ow

Entire body hurts. Mara carries out Zee’s instructions very well.

Thursday, July 3

In a galaxy far, far-

The whole morning went to medical for the beginning of cosmetic work on my legs. Not too bad, though it left the skin feeling numb and oddly hot, and I have bandages again.

This afternoon Zee had me try and visualise what’s going on in Pandora. They wanted to do this test while I’m still not able to manifest, because the previous set of tests proved that distance does take more energy (no real surprise there). I could tell they thought it was an extra-serious test because Ista Chemie was very careful and particular about all the medical equipment being on-hand and ready for business.

They’d decided on my building as the target location, Zee carefully describing the already-familiar furnishings. Imagining something and seeing it are very different experiences for me, so I knew that it was working. All that detail. Seeing things using this Sight makes it go almost super-real: every tiny smudge stands out, and all the colours seem special.

Seeing Pandora was hard, though. Carrying a person on your back and trying to walk up a flight of stairs hard. My heart-rate skyrocketed, I started to breathe like a steam-train and my throat and chest felt hot, quickly followed by the familiar stabbing headache that tells me I’m pushing myself into new territory. Zee immediately told me to stop, and I lay still with my eyes shut until Ista Chemie’s medications came into effect.

"Building growing extra rooms?" I asked, once I felt closer to human again. I’d almost thought I’d visualised the wrong place, because all the furniture had been cleared out and the walls seemed to be wrong.

"It’s being expanded. Properly shielded quarters for Setari stationed at Pandora. And that confirms that you can reach over that kind of distance."

"Earth even farther away," I said, sighing.

"Very likely." She gave me an evaluating look, then nodded, apparently deciding I wasn’t going to go experimenting with trying to see Earth any time soon. Not that I probably wouldn’t try if they gave me a supply of extreme headache medicine. And I probably will, eventually, if they don’t include it in my training and testing in the next couple of months. There are limits.

Not soon though. My head is still pounding underneath the blocking.

Friday, July 4

Somebody Wake Up

All morning in medical again – partially the inevitable brain scans, partially fooling with my legs, which are now encased in a different sort of bandage: a waterproof one I’m allowed to get wet, but not to soak, so no swimming or baths for the next couple of days.

I was eating a light lunch in the canteen when the captain of Tenth, Els Haral, slid onto the seat opposite, pulling Fourteenth’s captain Kin Lara down beside him.

"It’s against captainly protocols to gossip," Haral told me, smiling. "So we’re not at all asking you whether it’s true that Twelfth won some kind of ice environment combat exercise over all the other squads based on Muina."

"Squads gave me a snowball fight as a present, but is a game, not training," I said firmly. Ice environment combat exercise. Seriously.

Lara, who had briefly looked less sleepy than usual when Haral pulled him into the seat, shook his head, then gave in. "Either way, Twelfth won? Over First and Fourth?"

"And Second, Third, and Kolar’s First Squad. Zan picked smart strategy."

"How does the game work?"

Since they gave an impression of being pleased that Twelfth had won, but not in any way negative toward the other squads, I explained. So far as I can tell, First is considered the best close combat team, while Ruuel is probably the best individually, with Maze and Mara both considered almost equally dangerous. Not that I can get anyone to actually tell me that – but neither Haral nor Lara were the slightest bit surprised that Ruuel had won the second game.

It’s nice to know that Zan has some allies among the other squads. I had the faintest suspicion that Haral was teasing Lara about Zan, so maybe he’d be more than an ally if Zan gave him a chance. They stayed and chatted to me. Interested in Kalasa of course, but Haral also had lots of questions about Earth: he wanted to know more about volcanos and the things that made Earth different from Muina. They’re both very easy to talk to – more relaxed than a lot of the younger Setari – but eventually I had to go be tortured by Mara, who made me do something like Pilates or yoga. Lots of stretching myself and holding positions.

I spent that torture session turning over who Haral reminded me of, and finally worked it out. Not in looks, but that soft-spoken, laid-back thing he does is very similar to the Hicks character in Aliens.

Saturday, July 5

Size matters

No dangerous dreams last night, though I have some tangled memories that feel uncomfortable. I have noticed that my ability to tell who is nearby has expanded in range, and asked Zee how many Sights I might have: one or a hundred. Knowing where people are, and seeing coloured lights, and seeing things in the past and seeing fictional places, and seeing what’s happening on another planet all seem like rather different things to me. The most she could tell me is that it seems to consistently be the same area of my brain, and that it might be similar to Place Sight, which can be used in a lot of different ways.

I’m glad I don’t feel people’s emotions when I touch them.

Today we measured the energy output required for me to see different sized things which were all roughly at the same distance. And then fictional as opposed to real things. It made me very tired, and I had a nap before a squad dinner in Ketzaren’s rooms. She’d changed her wall display to a slideshow of images of Muina: snow and plains and mountains and streams and different forests and a wetland I hadn’t seen before, amazingly full of birds.

First Squad was decompressing after their rotation earlier in the day, and it seems they are finding it a big mental and emotional adjustment to go from the work they’d been doing on Muina to the intensity of rotations, where they are only ever winning battles, and never the war. And it’s getting harder. Twelfth isn’t the only squad which has hit some bad rotations lately and been injured, mainly due to an increase of deep-space Ionoth. Maze said they’re trying to decide between supplementing the existing squads with qualifying Kalrani, or simply having squads work in pairs. The whole reason the current squads are six members is because Ionoth, particularly deep-space Ionoth like swoops, are drawn to larger groups. If they’re having to deal with them anyway, then larger groups may gain more than they cost.

Sunday, July 6

Mara is evil

Tired. Sore. Debating taking a sickie tomorrow.

Monday, July 7

All worked up over nothing

Lunch with Haral – Els – again. I guess I wasn’t wrong, back when I tested with Tenth Squad, in thinking that maybe he liked me. My withdrawal that time must have just made him decide on a patient approach. He’s not overloading me with compliments, but he’s taking the opportunity of our lunch shift being at the same time to talk to me. No pressure, just chatting in a group with the rest of his squad, but I could tell he was into me.

So could his squad, judging by the wide-eyed glances a couple of them exchanged.

Els is a very cool and attractive guy and I like him. I can’t decide what to think about the possibility of more. I’m definitely giving it a lot of thought, and my training session with Zee didn’t go very well because I was distracted. But at least I discovered that if I think about two different things at once and don’t concentrate on just the one location I can give myself a really magnificent headache.

I’m trying to decide whether to respond to Els, or avoid him, or just treat him like a friend and pretend I hadn’t noticed any overtones of more. I do like him. I can easily imagine being with him. But how is it fair on Els to encourage him if I’m not sure I’d want to go through with it? When I wake up every morning totally focused on the absence of one very particular person? But I don’t want to be that either, mooning hopelessly over someone who isn’t a type of person I’d ever thought I’d like, is probably in a relationship with someone else, and has done his best to keep me at a distance.

Stupid. Stupid dilemma. I need to stop thinking about this.

Tuesday, July 8

Peering in the windows

Mara eased up on me a little today. She said she couldn’t bear my expression of dread any longer. And I sat in on a First and Second Squad group training session – just watching – because Maze and Grif wanted to think more on Rotational dynamics with a doubled squad. Afterwards they actually took me out into the city for dinner, which is the first time for ages and probably only happened because two whole Setari squads is sufficient to not only block me from casual view but to daunt even the most enthusiastic gawker. I did notice that even on their home island the social politeness of people pretending not to recognise them as Setari when they’re not in uniform has more or less fallen away, but we were still left to go to the fondue restaurant unharassed.

Nils, in an uncharacteristically non-flirtatious mood, talked to me a lot about the visualisations I’ve been doing and the difference between them and his illusions. There was an underlying current of concern behind all the conversation, but it was still a nice night.

Wednesday, July 9

Calooh! Callay!

Excellent, excellent day.

It started out routine, racking up another few hours in medical. I hesitated a bit before going to get lunch, still undecided on how I wanted to handle Els, but eventually figured that chatting over lunch could hardly hurt me. And then when I got to the canteen he was already with his squad at a full table, so I sat with Hasen and Henaz from Eighth, who were having breakfast. I’m finding it rare to go to the canteen and there not be someone around who wants to ask me all about some aspect of Muina.

Tenth Squad caught up with me as I was heading off to meet Zee and rather blatantly abandoned me with Els. They’re finding the idea of him pursuing me tremendously entertaining, but he’s good at not making it awkward. He told me how jealous they all were that Fourteenth has just been assigned to Muina, then asked me how my Sights and oddly real illusions training was going as we rode the elevator down to one of the main junctions. That’s all no secret among the Setari now.

"The music from the Kalasa manifestation was particularly interesting," he said, as I headed for a connecting elevator. "A melody, instruments, revived for a moment from extinction. Can you do that with the music of your own world? Manifest how it sounds from memory?"

I stared at him, thinking through the possible differences in picturing something on Earth, and projecting something I remember, then said: "I don’t know. But I’m certainly going to try."

He laughed. "I’m relieved I asked that just before you were heading to a monitored session."

I could only nod speechlessly, too excited for words as my lift came. "Thanks for the idea," I said, very glad I’d ended up talking to him, then spotted Third and Fourth getting off one of the opposite lifts and waved just before my doors shut. Fourteenth must be swapping out to relieve the senior exploration squads.

Zee blinked when I showed up bubbling over with Eeli levels of enthusiasm, and gave me a dry look as I tried to sell her on the idea of music being the same as fiction and not at all like me trying to look all the way to Earth and it wasn’t even the Sight part that mattered, but manifesting something I remembered already.

"No argument in the world’s going to stop you trying, so I won’t even bother," she said. "Since you haven’t been able to manifest anything lately, it may be a moot point, but so long as you follow orders and don’t do this outside the test environment, it’s as good a test subject as any other."

I’ve never looked forward to a test session so much. In truth, I’ve never really looked forward to a test session – it’s hard to look forward to headaches and exhaustion. All the short train journey I was trying to pick which song I’d really really missed and decided on Hollaback Girls, not because it was my favourite, but because it reminds me of Alyssa. I’ve been really wishing I could ask Alyssa what she thought about the whole Els situation. Actually, I already know – Ruuel’s really not her type of guy. She’d think me mad for ever preferring him to Els.

Then I fretted about whether or not my manifestation would still be too sore to use, and it did still feel a bit stretched. But useable.

It was tiring to do, but nothing like looking at Muina had been. I didn’t get much further than the first chorus, then lost focus and stopped, panting slightly, but smiling hugely. I’ve never been so happy.

"Can I try something else?" I asked Zee, once Ista Chemie had confirmed that the power cost wasn’t exorbitant. "A picture instead of a sound?"

I was lucky that one of the walls of the warehouse was clear of boxes. It made for a really, really huge screen. And I had just the documentary I wanted to show.

"This is my world," I told Zee unsteadily. The glowing blue and green and golden ball revolved slowly. "That’s Australia." I wiped at my face, changing what I was trying to project. "This is Sydney. Where I – where I grew up."

I had to have a little emotional break. Zee gave me a hug and Ista Chemie fed me hot drinks, and it was just so nice that all these frustrating and painful talents can finally give me something I actually want.

I was already way too tired, but Zee agreed to let me do one more. I almost couldn’t concentrate from trying not to giggle, and made sure to get a good look at Zee’s face as I said: "Johnny Depp, playing Captain Jack Sparrow." It was impossible to hold it very long, and I was so tired, but laughing. "Maze going to kill me."

Zee made a deal with me – I can try and manifest any music or images I want once every day after my other training is done, but only if I have at least one person with me and weren’t somewhere inconvenient to get to medical. I emailed Els and thanked him for the good idea and then sent him and First Squad and Isten Notra and Shon and Mori and Par and Glade and Zan and Eeli the images which the scanners at the warehouse had recorded of Earth. My own log was useless since crying blurred all the images. The Captain Jack sequence I sent separately just to First Squad, because I think Maze is going to kill me enough already without spreading it everywhere.

I fell asleep on the trip back, of course, and had fun reading everyone’s email responses when I woke up, particularly Lohn’s about Captain Jack. I’m so happy, and beyond all the feel-good stuff it will just be really useful being able to illustrate some of what I’ve been trying to explain about Earth. I’m pretty sure some sort of Sight must be involved in the projection, because there’s no way my memory is as good as those images.

Excellent, excellent day.

Thursday, July 10

Voyeur

I was just hyped all day, totally looking forward to being allowed to try and visualise something else. Mara said all the enthusiasm was useful for making me do more for my physical training – which is either getting easier or I didn’t feel it as much. The bandages are off my legs again, so we could have swimming in the afternoon, which I think Mara chose deliberately so I didn’t feel so tired afterwards. All First Squad joined us, and then came back to my rooms afterwards since I particularly wanted to show them things. I think they were all enjoying me being happy instead of the mope monster in the corner. Maze brought along a scanner for me which I can keep in my rooms to record any images or sounds I want to keep since a good scanner has a much less contaminated quality than things filtered by human eyes and ears, but he warned me that if anything involved pirates he may just have to have Mara increase my exercise load. Maze took the whole Jack Sparrow thing pretty well – I think it embarrassed him, but he doesn’t mind a bit of teasing. And he agreed that Johnny Depp looks a lot like him (except much older, and Maze doesn’t go in for facial hair).

We met Mori riding the elevator, and I invited her along, but she said that Fourth is doing a lot of training catch-up after being away from the training facilities for so long, and had to rush off. She looked really tired, so I guess that was her way of saying Ruuel is working Fourth into the ground.

I was very keen to make sure no-one thought it was too much stress on my system, so kept each image that I was displaying to a relatively brief duration, but I finally got to show Lohn what I meant by surfing and skiing. Then I showed them some Mayan and Egyptian pyramids and Machu Piccu, which was strategy on my part, since I knew that Islen Duffen would be highly encouraging of being able to see pieces of Earth’s ancient world. They agreed that there must be some kind of Sight element to me remembering the fragments of documentaries I was replaying, but it didn’t seem to be costing me too much energy.

It’s still fairly tiring, though, and I can’t play a whole song in one hit. Maybe I can put them together bit by bit. I fell asleep leaning on Ketzaren, and woke covered up but still on the couch, with Ghost curled up snugly with me. I’ve really got to remember to eat dinner before doing stuff I know will make me pass out.

I’m a little worried about doing this, because it might make me stronger. And the stronger I get, the more chance I have of accidentally hurting someone. If I dream about monster insects again, for instance. My Sights have definitely been growing stronger, particularly since I tried looking all the way to Muina. Since then I can sense people four levels up, and the shielding is posing less of a barrier. That has its good points and its bad points, one of which I found when I woke up just now and I wasn’t missing Ruuel. Not because Els has succeeded in distracting me, but because he’s asleep one floor up. If he’s within my senses when I wake, it doesn’t ache nearly as much.

The downside is that I really, really don’t want to know if he’s sleeping with Taarel. I’m trying to let him go, but that would be hard to deal with so I’m working very hard on figuring out a way to not be constantly half-aware of people around me. I need to be able to choose to be looking, or not looking, to not just be absent-mindedly aware. I’ve already discovered that Mori’s sleeping with the Eighth Squad captain (or they’re just…chatting…really closely…in the middle of her sleep cycle) and even without my problems with Ruuel I could live without finding out whole bunches of really private stuff about people by accident.

When I was sending my Earth pictures around yesterday, he was actually the first person I addressed the email to. Because he’d been training me, and, well, because I wanted to share them with him and I was very happy. But everyone else I was sending it to was my friend, and I realised I was pushing again, trying to get closer despite all my resolutions, so I removed his name. He’ll read Zee’s training report, after all.

Wonder if Zee will let me test more Earth-related stuff tomorrow?

Friday, July 11

Getting a message across

Big serious discussion today with Maze about The Hidden War. I’ve been ignoring the legal wrangling about it, although I knew that Evil PR Bitch has been slapped with massive fines and some weird kind of house arrest which severely limits her rights and movements. The question hasn’t been so much what happens to her (may she rot), but whether the producers can continue to use the information she provided.

"KOTIS is under a great deal of pressure at the moment," Maze told me. "Unlike our work in the spaces, Muina represents an immense emotional, financial and political…property. The question of whether KOTIS should control what is happening there has been raised again and again by those who see it primarily as a home to reclaim. There is increasing resentment over any attempt to control the information coming out of Muina, a growing sense that there are unnecessary layers of secrecy. KOTIS initially struggled to prevent any use of the information leaked about you altogether, but was met with political opposition as much as legal. It is very difficult to argue that it is not in the public’s interest to know these things, when you can scarcely find a person outside of KOTIS who agrees."

"You’re not leading up to me having to do interviews with reporters are you?"

"No. But the situation has moved on from preventing the continuing broadcast. The news services are actually reporting on each episode as it’s released, operating on the belief that more of the truth is learned in fiction than in the official communications from KOTIS." He sighed. "The hunger for any kind of information about you is immense. We can’t deny you are a pivotal part of the world’s history, and it is no longer considered acceptable to treat you as something we can keep secret."

"KOTIS decided to turn leak to own advantage?"

"Try to." He gave me a nod for recognising basic media manipulation. "The belief in the leak is useful, and the public battle to suppress the information has added to its value. And the show itself, annoying as this situation is, is unreservedly pro-KOTIS."

"Is going to keep telling them about the things which happen to me?" I asked warily. Evil PR Bitch had run off with my file shortly after I’d gone wandering through Kalasa. "Was kind of glad that stupid dreams weren’t going to turn up on gossip forums."

"Perhaps if you hadn’t dreamed Kalasa’s past so spectacularly that would have been possible." He gave my shoulder a quick squeeze. "That can’t be undone, and there’s very little chance that we’ll succeed in keeping it from leaking for much longer. Rumours are already surfacing. We are very likely to release the scans of that ceremony, and detail the process involved in gaining full access to Kalasa. As for the ongoing relationship with this drama – because so much of it is being taken as truth, we’re growing increasingly concerned with controlling the amount of fiction."

"Evil Fourth Squad?"

Maze winced. "One of the things we hope to gain trading information is the ability to correct particularly dangerous errors, and to lessen the damage being done to the squads who are linked to major events. There was a scene in tonight’s episode which they’ve agreed to remove–" He shook his head.

"You see episodes ahead of release?"

"And soon scripts, well before production. Because they’re so interested in keeping close to your true story, we don’t anticipate needing to demand changes very often." He made a face. "Terrible as it was, the Array massive served to remind more than a few people that Setari are too valuable to this world to purposelessly toy with. And the situation on Kolar was so bad until their Setari tracked down the source of the Ionoth which have been so destructive there."

I wasn’t particularly happy, but I could tell the main decisions had already been made. "Can I veto stuff as well?"

Maze agreed to that readily enough, then rubbed his temple. "I’ve always been more than pleased to ignore these dramas. Having them included in my duties is not a happy development. Fourth is a strong squad, and will weather this, particularly if we can keep dramatic indulgences to a minimum. But there’s something I do need to settle there." His mouth had gone all thin, the way it does when he’s doing things he doesn’t like. "Ruuel recommended the change in instructor for your Sights training, and said that he’d been unnecessarily strict. If Fourth is one of the squads you’d prefer not to work with, I need to know about it."

I could feel my face burn – a mix of anger and embarrassment. "Fourth my favourite squad other than First. Trust Ruuel very much, strict or not. Only thing seriously upset me with Fourth was Sight training with blindfold. Evil Fourth Squad funny at first, but joke get old very quick. Tonight’s episode nasty about them again? If following my story close, have reached when I go to Earth near-space? Did they get someone else to save me or something?"

"No." Maze was looking relieved. I expect it would have caused him quite a headache to add Fourth to the nasty squad list. "Everything’s a matter of tone and a few extra words. That’s partly why this is so difficult."

He gave me the episode, and went to get us something to eat while I watched. It really bugs me that Evil PR Bitch, and who knows how many other people, have watched me wander around Earth’s near-space and then talk to my family. The show kept to that pretty well, beyond my home looking distinctly Taren, and that they’d had to make up a translation (subtitles) for my sign conversation. I’d never translated it, and never been asked to – a tiny bit of consideration for which I was grateful. I was surprised how well they’d guessed my family’s responses, though they’d made Nick my brother and removed one of my aunts. The girl who plays the sexy kitten version of me is a rather good actress, and you could really see how much she ached to be able to hug her Mum.

Then Lastier showed up, and said almost exactly what Ruuel had said, except he added the things Ruuel had chosen not to say, starting with: "Are you so very selfish?" before explaining the risk I was posing to Earth. Lastier is a very interesting character – all Ruuel’s competence, but with portions of Kajal’s personality. Not outright evil, but blatantly revelling in his own excellence. The saint-like woman they had playing my Mum looked him up and down and signed: "Cruel eyes. Be careful."

After that it was all very dramatic, with kitten-me being run through a number of near escapes by a superbly competent Setari captain. Who, when I got around to thanking him for rescuing me, told me I was too useful a tool to waste. Kitten-me’s face went all crumpled at that one.

I’d wondered how they’d deal with Ruuel falling to his knees after enhancing his Sights, since that vulnerable moment didn’t match with Lastier’s arrogance at all, but they’d just removed that part altogether. Lastier enhanced after spotting the Ddura, went very still, then practically dragged kitten-me up the platforms – by the wrist not the hand.

A whole heap was made of the Pillar – a lot of the entire series has been about Pillar-chasing. After that, it was almost exact, with Lastier stabilising gates, finally reaching KOTIS. And calling me the stray.

Maze, who had been watching my reactions as the show finished up, was probably a bit surprised when I asked: "Why is everyone weird about Zan being a captain?"

He hesitated before replying, then said: "Combat Sight. Namara is the only captain without it, but is ably demonstrating that the role is not about being the best fighter on a squad."

"Zan linked with main character now – Twelfth likely to come out of this better than Fourth, but don’t think she enjoys it. What was scene you had removed?"

Maze grimaced, then showed me a final scene of kitten-me alone in medical, inspecting a circle of dark bruises around her wrist. Ironic, since it looked a lot like the bruises Ruuel had given me, when the Ddura was attacking at Pandora.

"They’re going to run into trouble if continue to stick to my story," I said. "Ruuel save my life more than once."

"It’s an infuriating situation," Maze said. "But controllable since your relationship with Fourth is solid. I do need to ask if your mother truly warned you against Ruuel."

"She just ask if he friend or enemy," I said. My face was hot, but I think I wasn’t giving too much away. I’ve been so careful to keep my opinion of Ruuel to myself – not only because it’s so worshipful, but because it’s hard to explain. It’s not like I think he’s perfect. Or even necessarily a generally nice person. Half the reason The Hidden War is able to make him into such a grey character is because he’s left himself open to being interpreted that way.

Wanting to change the subject I added: "If producers run out of plot ideas, suggest to them on my behalf that they do episode about me being really upset when someone steals my personal file and makes entertainment from it."

After that Maze went with me and Zee to Keszen Point, where we repeated the first tests I did with Zee, to see how they go now I’m manifesting. I had to do each one twice, and the first time not manifest but only visualise, and the second time manifesting. And I’m more or less able to do that. I’ve got to try and separate out manifesting things in real-space and manifesting things in near-space, which I can’t really differentiate between. But it was a good session, tiring, but with less headaches involved.

Maze and Zee were both pleased with the progress I’m making, but had me return to my room before letting me conjure any more Earth images. Which works for me, since I prefer them not to be in the official test logs anyway, and it saves being carted about unconscious. I showed them bits of Sydney, places I miss. Beach, park, the back yard of our house, my bedroom.

I fell asleep after that one, very appropriate. The next episode of The Hidden War airs soon, and I’m contemplating trying to be asleep when it does. Maze said Ruuel would be given the episode in advance, so he’ll know what’s coming. I bet he thinks the energy he has to spend dealing with it a complete waste.

I’m refusing to let myself feel guilty about any of this.

Saturday, July 12

Lastier Fan Club

I hadn’t managed to get back to sleep by the time The Hidden War aired, and wasn’t the least bit surprised when I had a channel request from Mori during the first ad break. Wanting to get it over with, I accepted, and was surprised to find Sonn and Halla in the channel along with the usual The Hidden War club.

"My Mum asked if he was friend or enemy," I said, before Mori could even ask. "Maze ask me same thing at lunch."

Glade, after a pause, laughed. "Not often I hear you sounding so impatient, Caszandra."

"Tired of program," I said. "Bad enough steal my life, but would have thought story dramatic enough without messing people about. Is not worth getting angry over, I know, since everyone here seen mission report and know not true, but still very annoying."

"I can’t say I’m enjoying watching any more," Mori said. "And yet, not watching and not knowing what’s being shown is worse."

"Yes, very much," I said. "Not looking forward to next week, since probably about all the horrid things I said to Maze when I was in medical."

Since I’d already seen the episode, I told them goodnight and dropped out of channel, hoping the last comment would distract them. There was a lot of things I’d thought about saying, but since I’d basically rather not discuss Ruuel with anyone, it had seemed best to keep my reaction brief and very definite.

None of this is enough to bring down my Earth-projections high, but it’s irritating.

Merger

Running around the stairs all morning with Mara. Just when I thought I was getting half-way non-pathetic, she shows me how far I have to go. And thinks it’s funny.

After lunch both First and Fourth were using the weights room. I do NOT need to see Ruuel working out. Way too distracting, and I’m in this tedious bind where I can’t be too obviously seen to be not looking at him, yet really don’t want to be caught looking at him.

He had huge circles under his eyes, black and bruised, as if he hadn’t slept for days. From the way his squad were keeping an eye on him, they’d reached the point of being really worried, and I had to wonder, from the look Maze gave him, whether a tired Sight talent might be forbidden from going on rotation. He’d hate that.

Toward the end of the session there was a notice to all the Setari about the new paired squad assignments. Twelfth and Fourteenth, both out on Muina. Fifth and Seventh, which I thought highly appropriate. Most relevant to me was First and Fourth, probably because I’d nominated them as my two favourite squads, which I guess was a huge mistake in terms of Ruuel-avoidance.

Fourth put a good face on it, but as I chatted with Glade, Mori and Par afterwards I realised they weren’t pleased. We were talking about my legs, and at first I thought it was trying to be delicate about the hideous scars which was making them strange. But it’s because the merger makes them the junior squad on all rotations. I think they felt it was a demotion.

Ruuel didn’t come near me at all. The last time we spoke was when he dropped a snowball on my face, if you could call that talking. He and Maze said a few short things when the announcement was made, and he was his usual detached self, and I’ve spent all my time since then worrying about why he wasn’t sleeping and what would happen if Fourth were forbidden from going on rotation.

Before the announcement, I’d been thinking of asking at least Mori back to my room to show her some things I’d been trying to explain about Earth, but in the end I just went with Mara, and told her she wasn’t allowed to log this projection, and then conjured the video of my last big family holiday. I mainly wanted to see myself, before all this happened. I looked short, weirdly, even though I’m sure I haven’t gotten taller.

Mara wisely didn’t comment, just gave me a blanket and told me to do some light swimming tomorrow while First and Fourth were off on their first joint mission. I slept very solidly for an hour or so, but then went into this constant nightmare cycle. It’s a good sign, really, since they’re real nightmares and I recognise them pretty much immediately and can wake myself up. And forcing myself awake isn’t giving me as much of a headache any more. But I just want to sleep and not think.

Going to go up to the roof. The weather doesn’t look great, but not impossible. Maybe the Nuran will show up and distract me.

Sunday, July 13

Speechless

The weather was dreadful. So windy it was hard to stay upright, with occasional drops of rain driven so fast they stung. I was glad of that, though, since gale-force wind makes it hard to think of anything but gale-force wind. I stayed on the roof until it felt like everything had been blown out of my head, then headed back to Setari quarters.

One level down on the final elevator, Ruuel got on as well, still showing little sign of sleep. I hadn’t been paying any attention, so when the door opened, I felt my eyes widen at the sight of him, and looked down guiltily. And then felt such an idiot for my reaction that I asked if having two squads together would change the way the rotations worked, or just make them quicker.

"Where the threat is low, we’re likely to work in adjoining spaces, with First clearing ahead while we evaluate gates. That will lessen the chance of attracting deep space Ionoth."

He’d sounded unconcerned, but narrowed his eyes, studying me. Then lifted one hand and pressed the back of it to my cheek. Very warm against my wind-chilled skin, and no gloves.

"The goal is to increase your general health," he said, sounding beyond annoyed, suddenly and inexplicably angry. "You’re at least capable of judging the kind of weather not to sit outside in."

I couldn’t understand what I’d done to make him lose his temper, and though he’d taken his hand away he loomed over me in a way which was almost threatening, making me wish I could back up. And that made me angry in return, so I asked in almost as annoyed a voice as his: "Too valuable be allowed do any living?"

He was very close – so near that I could see the difference between the pupil and iris in his black on black eyes. I’d never seen him less like himself, drawn and tired and glaring at me like I’d done something wrong just by being there. He only had to lower his head to kiss me, bruised my mouth while I stood too shocked to respond, and crowded me into the wall when I started to kiss him back. Every movement shouting anger.

Lifts move inconveniently quickly, and the doors opened on the floor for Third and Fourth’s quarters. There was no-one in the corridor, a circumstance for which I am eternally grateful, but Ruuel still stopped kissing me, leaning his forehead against the wall beside my head.

"You’ve no idea how little I want this," he said, barely audible and not exactly the most encouraging thing he could have said. He sounded furious.

"Actions not match words," was all I could manage, very aware that he hadn’t moved away from me, that his heartbeat was as loud to me as my own, that he was so angry.

He let out his breath, more exasperation than amusement, then turned his head just enough to be talking directly into my ear. "You need to be very certain you want this."

The lift doors opened on First and Second’s floor, but I was struggling with what he’d said, and resenting the way he’d said it. I’m still not sure if he was doing his best to make me storm off, or was just at the end of his tether. Since he’d never given me any sign that there was a tether in the first place, I was having to adjust a lot of ideas to even begin to answer him.

"What is certain?" I asked, very aware of the way one of his hands had tightened on my arm. "Haven’t even ever really talked. Only know that every day, first I know on waking, is that you’re not there. I hate it when you’re not there."

It was a pathetically scrambled reason, and when he drew back I was sure that I’d chosen exactly the wrong moment to be honest. He wasn’t wearing a very promising expression, either, very closed, with that haughtiness which was part temper and part born, I think, out of knowing so much about people. But his hand slid down my arm, and caught mine, and he turned and walked out of the lift, trailing me along behind him into my quarters, into my bedroom.

I was practically having kittens by the time he let go and turned and looked at me, because, seriously, he’d been pushing me away for so long, and now we were jumping straight to sex? Right after he told me he really didn’t want to? Not exactly the stuff of romance.

But whatever else, good or bad idea, I wanted him. More than anything. So I followed his lead when he withdrew his nanosuit and took off the uniform harness. Standing in my underwear with Kaoren Ruuel was in a whole different league to Sean J and the two awkward times in the caravan in his parents' backyard. For one thing Sean and I spent a lot of time laughing at our mutual embarrassment, and Sean didn’t look one tenth so grim. Nor did he shake just because he touched my hand.

My diligent research with Super Sight Six had warned me that sex for a Place Sight talent can be more than a little complicated. Not only is it depressingly clear if your partner isn’t really into it, but what they’re feeling can ramp everything up until it becomes overwhelming. Ruuel would have had a full serving of my reaction in the lift, and the emotional equivalent of omgwtfomgwtf! had probably reached the point of !!!!!!!!!!!1!!1!! by then. He paused, just standing with our hands linked, down by our sides, and took a few more breaths before lowering his head and kissing me. But at least he’d stopped looking like he was heading for an execution, was intent and concentrated. It calmed me down a few exclamation marks, and we leaned into each other and let it just be kissing for a while.

I let go of his hands first, because I wanted to put my arms around him, and he responded by unhooking my bra. I have no memory of moving to the bed, but we got there soon after. I suppose I should be glad Ruuel doesn’t try to be as super-quick and efficient about sex as he is with testing, but he drove me completely insane touching and then pausing to gauge my reaction. We were both breathing like sprinters by the time he stopped being able to be slow and exploratory, and I can actually see the moment on my log because he opened his eyes properly, then shut them altogether for a second. That was around the point I gave up adding exclamation marks, and fuzzed out into white noise.

He held me almost too tightly afterwards, until both of us were breathing a bit more normally, then said, "Shower?"

I nodded, and liked the way he kept hold of my hand. And liked more his reaction to showering together, which started out as a shower, but was mainly being all wet and slippery together in a close, half-lit space with a fortunately solid wall.

We weren’t being big on small talk. The only time either of us spoke past that was when we’d switched the dryer on, and were standing tucked against each other just until we were no longer dripping. He was exploring my back – glancing touches on shoulder blade, spine, ribs – and murmured, "I knew if I started touching you I wouldn’t be able to stop." Just loud enough for me to hear.

"Not complaining," I said, and if we both weren’t by that time beyond exhausted, I would have liked to stay looking up at him. As it was, we curled back into my bed and I fell asleep almost before I lay down. First time I’ve slept in that room since my dream about the Array massive.

I didn’t wake till late into my next shift, nearly lunchtime. Fortunately First and Fourth’s rotation wasn’t till after lunch. I don’t know how many days Ruuel – or Kaoren as I really should call him, even though I haven’t yet – hasn’t been sleeping properly, but he didn’t stir when I slid out of bed to go to the bathroom. Even with him asleep, I suddenly felt awkward about wandering around naked, and pulled on my nightshirt before I slid back into the bed. That did wake him, but only enough to tuck an arm across my waist, sigh, and settle against my back.

My life keeps changing completely. Ruuel – Kaoren – deciding to respond to me is not quite so major as walking to Muina or being rescued from it, but it feels like a close third. I lay wondering if we’d actually have conversations, and what it would be like when we disagreed. I hardly know him. He’s a tough but fair captain, super-efficient, serious, and the only thing I know about him outside of that is a couple of glimpses of arrogance, and the possibility that he might have a sense of humour.

And he said he really didn’t want to be with me.

I froze there, remembering that first Sights testing session and how he had thought it a bad idea, but had done just what he’d been ordered, and been angry. And Kaoren reacted to my dismay, tightening his arm and shifting in his sleep. I drew back from the brink of the impending wangst storm, though, because I know very well that neither Kaoren nor Tsur Selkie are stupid, and Kaoren faking a romance with me would be idiocy. A metric fuckton of dumb so epically, mind-destroyingly beyond a bad idea that there’s not a chance they would go there.

Having decided that, I relaxed and a moment later Kaoren did as well, let out a breath which tickled the back of my neck, and snuggled closer. I really loved that he’d reacted to my feelings, and my brain decided it was full of champagne bubbles, which made Serious Brooding very difficult.

I was enjoying a few highlights of my log when Ghost came to visit, and jumped on the bed beside me. I stroked her under the chin, smiling at the buzz of her purr, but it was only when she poked out her nose, whiskers twitching and quivering, and scented Kaoren’s hand that he woke. And jerked so violently backward he impacted with the wall as Ghost, spitting and squalling, rose abruptly into the air above us and hung there – trapped by Telekinesis.

Not how I’d planned to say good morning.

After a few frozen moments he put Ghost down. She immediately ran, and may possibly never visit me again, but that’s infinitely better than if he’d killed her. I’m extremely glad not to have to find out how I would have coped with that.

Kaoren’s eyes were wide, and he took a long breath, then said: "Give me a moment," and went into the bathroom, leaving me with a total reversal of feeling. No bubbles, just a sinking sense that I’d ruined everything already. I sat on the edge of the bed with my knees drawn up to my chin and wondered how I’d been stupid enough to forget how Kaoren Ruuel had been raised.

But sitting hunched up in a ball playing misery-me wasn’t going to help, so I uncurled, rested my hands loosely at my sides, and ran through a couple of the visualisation exercises he’d given me, which are as good for calming yourself down as they are for guiding your dreams. I’m pretty sure Kaoren recognised what I was doing, because he paused a moment at the door when he came back, then sat down beside me and looked down at my hand, just an inch from his leg. He put his own hand in the gap I’d left between my hand and my leg: a very deliberate placement, fingers just short of brushing mine.

"Have you ever touched animal you weren’t in process of killing?" I asked, and wasn’t at all surprised when he said no. "Sorry," I went on. "Should have thought about that when Ghost arrived."

"Another of the things about this world which barely make sense to you." He shifted his fingers so that one rested against mine. "We both have a lot of learning to do."

This was tremendously encouraging, and I relaxed properly, thinking that of course he would have had to be very very certain about wanting me to have ever come near me in the first place. For all he’d said he didn’t.

"Will you tell me why?" I asked, struggling to keep my voice from going small. "Other than second level monitoring, which is – will someone watch this?"

"The beginning." Kaoren didn’t sound happy about it either. "To be certain I didn’t coerce you."

"Is it against the rules to sleep with me?"

"Not in so many words. Hardly possible to forbid you any form of relationship. But it’s been made very clear that you are not an exotic toy." He moved his fingers further, so they curled against my palm. "All that, who you are, oversight committees, the need to even discuss this with anyone – those are annoying, but not by any means enough reason to stay away from you."

I was finding the spare touch of his fingers amazingly distracting – along with the knowledge that Place Sight would make my reaction more than clear – but managed to ask: "Keep nearly dying?"

"That of course is difficult. Even just thinking of you distracts me from the focus I need to be most effective, and I do not want or appreciate that. But, far more than that, you enhance my Sights. I avoid contact with people even when my Sights are at normal levels. And there was a not inconsiderable risk that such extreme sensitivity while sleeping–"

"Worse dreams than me." Another thing which I hadn’t even thought about.

"The reverse seems to occur, though." He lifted his hand away from mine, and held it out before him, looking at the outspread fingers. "My ability to control is enhanced, not simply strength."

I felt immensely stupid for seeing how often he had nightmares, how he struggled with all he could see, but never considering what my effect on that part of him might do to his opinion of crawling into bed with me. "But what changed your mind?"

"Four nights of dreams featuring Els Haral."

I didn’t understand, despite the twist to his mouth, a kind of disgusted amusement. Then I counted back four days, and realised that when Fourth Squad had arrived back from Muina they’d seen me being so incredibly excited at Els' suggestion that I try projecting memories, and Els being, well, whatever it is Els is with me.

"Jealous." Impossible not to enjoy the idea, for all that nightmares about me and Els had left him dangerously exhausted. I lifted my hand, palm up so it met his from below. "Will have to thank Els for that, some time."

So now I know he does have a sense of humour, because he let out his breath in a tiny snort, and then gave me a "you’ll pay for that" look, and then we went back to being immensely non-verbal, up through to a second shower with a lot of steamy kissing, but not enough time for more. Kaoren still came close to being late for a pre-rotation meeting with Maze.

They’re all in the spaces at the moment, and I’m not close to having adjusted mentally. I’m not really in the mood for my scheduled swimming, and keep wondering if there’s someone somewhere watching me having sex.

Kaoren told me before he left that he’d already reported what we were doing to Selkie, and that Maze would know. That makes me feel more than odd, for all I should be used to my complete lack of privacy. I expect I’ll get some very surprised people staring at me by the time the week is done. I have to adjust first, to how quickly and totally things changed.

Rolling around in bed with Kaoren Ruuel isn’t going to fix the universe. I’m still this weird thing called a touchstone, who might kill people in my dreams. Monsters and politicians both still want to get their hands on me. And even though Tare and Kolar are taking back Muina, I can’t say for sure we’re even one step closer to stopping the spaces from tearing apart.

It took all of thirty seconds after First and Fourth went into the Ena for my mood to switch from "unspeakably happy" to "fretting". Every rotation is a chance for something to go wrong. Every day the situation gets worse. I think the biggest thing last night changed is me, my attitude toward being this touchstone. Because if I can figure out what the hell it is I can do, if I can get that under control, maybe I really can do something to fix all this. Maybe I can keep him safe.

Somehow.

Caszandra

Description

mid-July to November

Cassandra Devlin doesn’t know what she’s for. But she knows she’s running out of time.

Since Cass was rescued from the abandoned world of Muina, the Aussie teen has proven more than useful to the people of Tare. Expeditions to their home world no longer end in slaughter. The teaching city of Kalasa has been unlocked. After years of searching for answers, they are starting to make progress.

But space is tearing itself apart. Ionoth attack in ever-greater numbers. And "the useful stray" has been injured so many times that the Tarens hesitate to use her for fear of losing her.

With one particular Taren now her most important person, Cass is determined to contribute everything she can, and hopes to find some answers of her own. What is the link between Muina and Earth? Why are the reclusive Nurans so interested in rescuing her? And what role in the crisis do the inhuman Cruzatch play?

Can Cass keep herself together long enough to find out?

July

Sunday, July 13

Hero 101

It’s one thing to decide to save the universe, another altogether to find a way to go about it. Today I catalogued my various abilities to try and work out how they could be used to fix fracturing spaces. Enhancement, hearing Ddura, sleep-walking to Earth, making soap bubble copies of real and fictional places, and seeing blurry. Somehow, surely, it must all fit together in a way where I can do something tangible to help.

Mostly, though, I thought about sex.

I doubt I’m going to make much progress toward saving the universe by constantly replaying images of naked Kaoren Ruuel, but, damn. Naked Kaoren Ruuel.

The subject of all my steamed-up imagining opened a channel to me when First and Fourth returned from rotation to say he’d be busy for a while, and knew that I’d very likely fall asleep after my Sights training, but that he’d bring me dinner when I woke. I managed an okay which sounded completely shy and though he just said: "I’ll see you then," before breaking contact, I could hear the smile in his voice. Or think I could.

This is going to be a continual mental adjustment. Not just for us, either, as I found out when Zee came to see me before we were supposed to start off for my Sights training.

"Maze says he’s not quite equal to having this conversation with you," she said, wry and amused. "I expect you know what about."

"Everyone in First Squad know?" I asked, thoroughly daunted. I’m not really at the stage where I want to talk about this with anyone but Kaoren.

"Not as yet. Although this does have some impact on our roster for waking you if you can’t escape one of your dreams. Is it something you wanted to keep secret?"

I was kind of yes and no about that, and she laughed at my confused mumble, then gave me a warm smile.

"I don’t really need to know more than that you’re comfortable, and remind you that we’re here if there’s anything you want to discuss."

There was something she was the right person to ask. "Is Kaoren somewhere right now get huge lecture because of me?"

"Not quite," Zee said, after a moment’s pause. "Though it’s good that you’re conscious of the potential complications. He must, let us say, justify his actions, but he won’t be collecting more demerits on your account, at least not simply for this."

"More?" Any demerits were news to me, but I hit on an obvious reason right away. "That Sights training session?"

"Indeed. You don’t often see below the surface decisions to the cross-factional aspects of KOTIS Command, but that session, which Tsee Ruuel initially refused to carry out, led to a minor drama. The previous occasion was when he retrieved you from your home world’s near-space."

"Demerits for rescue me?" I asked, startled.

"For far exceeding the number of spaces he was permitted to trail you. Sight Sight talents are tremendously rare – too valuable really to be risked even within the limits he was allowed on that foray – but very difficult to argue out of decisions made based on that Sight."

She was giving me fair warning, and I could hardly deny her point. "He sort of apologised for being sort of wrong, once. Plus couldn’t keep to his own decision to stay away from me." And had, at least, shown no more sign of being angry because he was unable to stick to that choice. "Don’t think he’ll manage to convince me he’s right all the time, anyway," I added, and figured it was well past time to change the subject. "How did two squad rotation go?"

"Very well. One stilt, but not the crowds of deep-space roamers we’d feared. It works especially well with an exploration squad, of course, since they must remain in a newly-cleared space much longer than a combat-oriented squad. We only fought together on the stilt and on one particularly populated space – one which Fourth would have been very unlikely to have been able to clear on their own. We’ll also be trialing eight-member squads, and the next few weeks will involve a great deal of data collection to gauge which approach results in fewer injuries. Possibly it will be a question of using both options, depending on the spaces involved."

We went down to Keszen Point a little early, and put in a really solid session of testing – again repeating earlier tests, but with manifestation as well as Sights. I guess seeing things is where I might most logically contribute, and we’re making progress on finding out my limits. Zee didn’t question me any more about Kaoren, which I thought nice of her, but the test session left me so exhausted I fell asleep on the train back and woke on my couch.

Kaoren’s in another meeting, but it shouldn’t be much longer. He told me to eat without him. Squad captains are kept very busy, even when they’re not getting hauled over the coals for smexing strays, and I bet I’m going to have fun dealing with how little time Kaoren has for anything but being captain.

Though right now I’m still pretty much champagne bubbles and incredulous gloatation.

Monday, July 14

More than a rumour

When Kaoren came to my rooms after his meeting, there was a red line, a cut, following the line of his jaw. The everyday danger the Setari face wasn’t something I enjoyed being reminded of, and I reached up and touched the thin mark.

"Is that my fault?" I asked. "Because you not concentrating?"

He ran his thumb along the cut, as if he’d forgotten it was there. "Flying Leaves space. You went through it with First. The population increase there has made it exceptionally difficult. And the effort of not thinking of you has been far more distracting than–"

I kissed him, effectively putting off any chat till this morning, and then we were nearly late for our respective training sessions. I think neither of us wanted to talk about how much harder the spaces are getting, or how much easier Flying Leaves space would have been if Lohn had been able to create a Light wall with me. Or maybe we just didn’t want to talk at all, to try and frame words around the transition we’ve gone through. We’ve skipped stages I know how to label – first dates and movies and working up to going steady – straight into an undefined state of together.

I guess together will do as a word.

During our bout of stretching/yoga torture, Mara pretended Zee hadn’t told her anything, having great fun at my expense asking if I had had any nightmares, and whether I was moving stiffly because I wasn’t getting enough training. But eventually she stopped, and gave me a hug.

"It’s too fun making you blush. You should have seen Lohn’s reaction. He kept saying: With Ruuel? Are you sure? Then he asked Maze if he felt like a father whose little girl had grown up."

I smiled at that – it was just what I’d expect Lohn to say. But I had something more serious it had occurred to me to worry about. "Unsure Fourth Squad reaction," I said. "Fourth Squad with Kaoren bit like First Squad with Maze – respect him and protective of him – but don’t tease him the same way. And they’ve been good to me. I think might be uncomfortable about this."

"Probably at first," Mara agreed, with the blunt honesty which lets me ask her questions like that. "Every squad, even First, places their captain into a special category. The authority captains have over their squad, and the need to trust their orders in situations of extreme danger, makes it very difficult to treat them as a peer. In many ways it’s better not to. Captain training is difficult to pass, and balancing a squad around a captain is usually the main reason for delay in forming new squads. Ninth showed you where even a competent captain can fail to cope with a squad member wrong for her type.

"Ruuel is an excellent captain, a very strong personality, but distant. It works well with Fourth. They are proud of him, strive to live up to him. I know that if he was my captain, I would find it difficult if a friend of mine became his lover. If you are close to them, and he is not distant with you, it changes their relationship with their captain. Don’t be too surprised if their initial reaction is a little more than surprise. They’ll adapt."

"If they don’t?"

Mara gave me a wry smile. "Then they won’t be living up to their captain. If nothing else, this should remove some of the pressure they’ve been under because of The Hidden War. If you are happily bedding Ruuel, there can’t be much basis to this villainous Lastier." But she went on more seriously. "Don’t underestimate the situation generally, however. Maze was very concerned – he hadn’t suspected at all – and since Ruuel is such a strong personality, he was worried about how much of this is really what you want." She snorted. "Zee pointed out that you’re the girl who gave him a lecture on how annoying our transparently manipulative psychological tactics were. You’re not an aggressive person, but whenever we’ve come up against things you care about strongly, you’ve grown unexpectedly firm."

I felt my face burn, and looked away, but said: "Liked Kaoren since he brought back from Earth near-space. He has tried very hard discourage me."

She tousled my hair. "Can’t say I’d want to get into bed with a piece of living history either. Now with this next set of stretches, stop bending your knee."

I had medical for the afternoon, so Mara gave me an early break for lunch and of course I ran straight into Mori, who grabbed my hand and dragged me into a corner of the canteen. "I’m feeling very uninformed, Caszandra. Tell me if the rumours are true."

"Which rumour?" I asked, wishing I’d been sensible and eaten in my room.

"The Els Haral and Caszandra Devlin spending lots of time together rumour. We saw you the day we came back from Muina, but no-one bothered till now to let me know there was more to it."

I tried not to look too relieved. "Els chatted to me couple of times at lunch, and gave me very good idea for making projections from memories rather than visualisations."

"There’s more to it than that, I bet. I hear he’s not hiding his interest."

"Not going to happen," I said, firmly.

She looked tempted to press me more, but Glade, Par and Halla had found us, so Mori settled for murmuring wickedly: "After all, we have it on record that the Third Squad captain is the best looking."

Fortunately Glade was more interested in talking about the various squad pairings, letting me play coward and put off changing the way they treat me. They seemed pretty pleased with how yesterday’s rotation went, and no longer quite so worried about being junior squad. First, of course, are easy to work with and Glade was super happy that Mara had complimented him on the way he’d taken down one of the Ionoth. From that conversation I finally learned that Maze and Mara are considered the best hand-to-hand fighters among the Taren Setari, with Kaoren’s Sight Sight believed to give him a mild advantage over pure technique.

How Mara puts up with training me I don’t know, but I am exceptionally pleased that she and Zee think I’m not a complete pushover, despite my combat failures. I don’t think I’ve ever had a nicer compliment.

I’m in medical now, having the usual scans and another round of cosmetic work on my legs. Fleshy blue bandages for the next few days. And Kaoren wants me to come to his room after the medics are done. He says the door will open to me.

Tuesday, July 15

Cheer Squad

Kaoren was still training when I was let loose from medical, so I footled about for a while, changing clothes and brushing my hair a lot and looking doubtfully at the small amount of makeup I’d been given by Nenna. When I’ve been out in the city with Zee and Mara and Ketzaren and Alay they’ve sometimes worn a little makeup, but it’s not practical for their day-to-day work. I’ve been following their lead, but felt like, I don’t know, marking the transition I’ve made, I guess.

Although briefly tempted to see how Kaoren would react to Cass the Goth, I settled for a touch of lip gloss and felt tremendously conspicuous walking down the corridor on Third and Fourth’s floor, for all I knew perfectly well both squads were elsewhere. And even though he said he’d added me to his apartment’s permissions, I still felt weirdly convinced Kaoren’s door wouldn’t open to me, until it did.

Kaoren didn’t have any active images in the public space of his apartment. Instead he had pictures on the walls, real pictures in deep frames like glassed-in boxes. Inside were little landscapes, cities, forests, all cut out of what looked like stiff white paper, some parts outlined in black or delicate colours but most just white on white. Incredibly complex and beautiful and amazing, with so much detail that you’d need hours to look at a single picture properly. He had four of them and in one, which reminded me a lot of High Forest space, I saw some miniature figures which I realised were Setari.

Deeply impressed, I spent a long time finding other tiny details, then moved on to the rest of the main room. Very tidy, which didn’t surprise me at all, with white and blue colours for the furniture, including long, dark blue shelves on the wall without pictures, full of evenly spaced objects. A specked-green stone statue which looked vaguely Mayan. A small, palm-sized curved bowl. A set of thick shiny metal links all joined together like an oversized puzzle ring. A really smooth pebble which looked like it had come from Pandora. An origami crane, the one I’d handed to him in my dream. It was a disjointed collection.

The bedroom and bathroom were very bare and clear by comparison, and I wandered around briefly, then curled up in one of the surprisingly comfortable chairs (they looked very firm, but were wide and deep) and immediately dozed off, and then Kaoren was there looking down at me with his eyes half-closed, as if trying to decide whether to wake me. I held out a hand and he slid into the chair beside me, which just snugly held us both.

I enjoyed the way his expression lightened, as if just sitting down with me lifted his mood, though he went on to say, "You have a slight temperature. A side-effect of the reconstructive work."

"Don’t feel that bad," I said. "Bit groggy." I curled my hand around the back of his head and kissed him slowly because I could, because I was allowed to, then said: "I like this room. First time I’ve seen real pictures on walls since came to Tare. Get lost looking at them."

"My brother creates them for me."

"Good illustration of how little I know about you," I said, sleepily accepting the idea of Kaoren having a brother, though I’ve had a chance since then to get a bit nervous about meeting any of the Ruuels. "Will you tell me about your family?"

He didn’t reply immediately, and I wondered if he didn’t want to, but then he started off, voice detached:

"My mother is Teor Ruuel. A sculptor. My father, Paran, a mathematician. I was five and Arden – my brother – six when the Setari program shifted to phase two, and both of us tested as strong talents. Sight is very much a part of the Ruuel bloodline. Our parents did not try to prevent our removal by KOTIS – they would have had little chance of succeeding any legal challenge – but they are very opposed to the concept of Setari. Of squandering gifted on futile violence, best left to the untalented. When we were permitted home visits, we were forbidden to speak of our training."

I was staring up at him, but his eyes were focused on someone not there so I didn’t say anything.

"Arden has my Sights, not Speed, and is vastly my superior in Light element. He loathed the program, rebelled in every way. Many Kalrani do, and KOTIS is generally successful in directing that energy more usefully, but Arden’s resolution was beyond them and he was allowed to withdraw at eleven. He is becoming increasingly known for his creations."

"He couldn’t accept learning to kill?"

Kaoren turned his head to look at the pictures on the walls. "That didn’t matter to Arden. He simply considers his time better spent."

"Do you enjoy visit home?" It seemed to me that Kaoren’s family was a bad fit for someone who is so very serious about being a Setari.

"No. I only return now to escort my sister, Siame. She is in her forties, a Kalrani. I want you to meet her, on the free day we have scheduled. She will be painfully jealous of what you are to me, but will try not to show it."

First a brother, and then a sister, one who was going to be jealous. "I’ll try not to be–" I paused, thinking about it – and reminding myself that the forties are the mid-teens. "Try not to be threatening."

He let out his breath, a short tuh of amusement, but then kissed me and had an interesting time stopping kissing me, particularly since I don’t take a slight temperature nearly as seriously as he did. He’d ordered in food (a selection of spicy goop, hot and cold, with something which could have been naan bread) and after we ate he told me the origins of the seemingly random items on the shelves in the room. Some of them were very unremarkable to look at, but were all about his Sights and the way they felt to him in Place. The way he spoke made me wonder if he’d ever talked about them before.

My blue bandages meant no indulgently long showers, but even a short one was sufficient to convince Kaoren that my temperature was probably not really a concern. I experimented with how he reacted when I tried to take the lead, and found that he’d let me do anything I cared to, but that not being in charge drove him completely insane. It was very fun for me to let him stop passively taking it.

I wonder if Kaoren’s parents still think the Setari are a futile waste, now that they’ve recovered a world.

Wednesday, July 16

Home sweet

First and Fourth were away for a really long time on today’s rotation. It’s so frustrating to be too valuable to go with them. Instead of finding a way to save the universe, I feel like I’m being packed in cotton wool, just spinning my wheels instead of making any progress. But I guess there’s not much I can do about that except work hard during my exercise sessions so they think I’m recovered enough to contribute. No more medical dramas or fainting fits or conjuring things up to hurt me.

As it is, I’m going to have to make sure to start doing something which takes all my attention – like playing my historical mystery games – around the time First and Fourth are due back because I was climbing the walls by the time they finally returned. Zee cancelled my Sights training because she was so tired and had missed when it was supposed to start.

She told me it had been a great success, though, since they’d finally tracked down the home space of those hairy roamers which have been causing all the squads grief since the spaces realigned. One thing I hadn’t realised about roamers which originate in spaces, rather than in deep-space, is that if the roamers leave their home space long enough, the space remembers them again. So the numbers can really build up.

Kaoren came and found me almost straight away, which surprised me since he likes to get his report writing out of the way before coming near me and my tendency to kiss him. We found something to eat, and then he began to talk about the roamers' home space, voice his usual detached tone, but his hands moving restlessly, which is very unusual for him.

"They’re one of the most unpleasant Ionoth we’ve encountered. They kill for trophies, and torment and torture the occupants of the spaces they invade. Trap paths. And engage in ritualistic ceremonies which make uncomfortable imprints in Place. Their home space was large and beautiful – orchards, a village apparently woven from thin branches – but so ugly in Place that it was almost impossible to view that way. And it is also like the Castle space – the space is a memory of the occupants of the village being invaded, overwhelmed, driven into the surrounding orchards by a different type of Ionoth. We arrived in the portion of the cycle where the roamers are being pushed out, and instead of engaging with them, we removed the conquerors. There is a strong chance that if we continue to do this during the critical period, they will not roam. It is a rotation which will take at least two squads to achieve, if only to discourage them by force of numbers from attacking us."

"There still roamers from previous cycles out there, yes?"

"More than likely. Even if there are not, the traps they’ve laid will remain until the spaces revert."

"Be strange for roamers if go back to home space and have fight with themselves," I said. "Can see why Zee so pleased with today’s result, though."

"Dual squads are working well for exploration," he said. "Not so well for some of the clearance rotations because two heavy-strength squads are overkill for many spaces, and unless they continually leave one squad a space behind they’re encountering the greater numbers of deep-space Ionoth predicted. We’ve been drawing them, too, but only when we pause too long in the same space."

He tucked me against his side and settled down to work on his reports, which I thought an excellent way to deal with so much of his time having to be devoted to being a squad captain. I don’t think it was only for my benefit, either. The roamers' home space was obviously really difficult for him to deal with – he and Halla both study new spaces closely for evaluation purposes – and I think that being with me put some of the nastier aspects at a distance for him.

I spent my time educationally, watching a documentary on seaweed (the source of much of Tare’s oxygen, which I had been wondering about given the lack of trees). An entire ocean of seaweed, great heaving masses of it so thick that it heaps up above the water and then gets ripped apart by storms. It’s a bit like earth worms – being cut up is a way for it to reproduce.

Taren documentaries are so entertainingly weird, but I really should stop watching them. I still can’t sit anywhere near an air duct without picturing that cleaning snot glooping about on the other side. Waiting. And the other day there was one about how the toilets work. They’re lined with a nanite similar to the cleaning snot, which engulfs anything in there when the lid closes and moves it away beyond the membrane of goop through pipes all the way to waste recycling. Not only did I not want to hear about what they did with it after that, but they kept comparing the process to what happens to a mouthful of food when you swallow it. Now whenever I put the toilet lid down, I swear I can faintly hear:

Om nom nom nom

Anyway, the seaweed documentary was nearly over when a channel request came from Els, who asked me if I had anything planned for my free day.

I blushed; a silly thing, but Kaoren was right there and it felt so strange to have someone else trying to arrange a date right in front of him. "Els very nice person–" I began, carefully.

He laughed. "I can hear the but already. I improve on further acquaintance, I promise."

"Believe you." I paused and looked up at Kaoren’s face, mouth a straight unsmiling line, eyes half-closed, blackly unreadable. "Sorry, but am very in love with someone else."

Els really is a cool guy, and he gracefully said: "Then I can only be envious of that person. We can still chat at lunch, I hope, if that won’t make you uncomfortable."

That was fine with me, since I doubted anyone would take seriously rumours about us much longer. I said goodbye to Els, and have spent the next while catching up on this diary entry. I think I’ll try projecting some music once Kaoren’s reports are done. I’ve been thinking about recording some classical music for Zan (presuming I can remember what little classical music I’ve heard – Mum only likes classical in small amounts and I never really paid much attention). Since I haven’t done anything much at all today, I’m hoping I might be able to get a good segment of something recorded, and piece it together into a whole over the next few days.

Thursday, July 17

If that’s your boyfriend…

I managed almost half of Night on Bald Mountain for Zan yesterday and then Kaoren and I both slept till what would count as about 4 am in our current sleep cycle, when he woke from a minor nightmare about the hairy roamer space. He seemed very glad I was there, and we enjoyed the luxury of not having anything at all scheduled until the afternoon, when Kaoren had arranged to take his sister out into the city after meeting me. I’m not allowed out without a really large escort now, and that’s not going to change in the near future. I was working on not being grumpy about that.

We ate leftovers and chatted briefly about music (it doesn’t surprise me that what music Kaoren does listen to is the Taren version of classical), but again we didn’t do much talking. Kaoren is a lot less stingy with words privately than he is when he’s on duty, and has so far answered every question I’ve asked him. But I still haven’t recovered from my tendency to kiss him.

Around mid-morning Maze sent us the next episode of The Hidden War to review, which distracted me enough to stop for breakfast.

"Would you watch this if Fourth Squad hadn’t been pulled into it?" I asked, as we settled on the couch with mugs of hot soup.

"I have for years, though not so devotedly as Eyse and Ferus. It shapes the way we are viewed too greatly to ignore, as well as being well-written. A distorted mirror." Kaoren tilted his head at whatever expression was on my face, then gave me one of his barely visible smiles. "If my squad would stop taking it as a direct insult, Lastier would be a source of endless amusement. Some of the things he has said were very much what I was thinking."

He keeps surprising me. "I guess I was very dirty."

"No, pathetic creature would be closer there." His smile faded, then he took my mug and put it and his own on the floor then pulled me properly onto his lap and gave me an image out of his personal log – a closed but not opaque pod on the Diodel, with the me from months ago lying inside, freshly scrubbed and deeply unconscious. In the medical tunic they’d given me after I’d been rescued I looked painfully thin and bruised. "I was mildly surprised that you’d managed to survive, composed my report, and didn’t think about you until we found you being trained by Namara. Yet I kept that image."

He recovered our mugs (Telekinesis is so useful) and we watched the episode quietly, waiting till the end to talk since there were no ads. It was the first time the show had been primarily from my point of view since I was rescued. I find it odd the things which they show out of order, or which were hugely important to me which are left out altogether. Like my reaction to having my interface expanded, which did after all nearly kill me, and hurt like hell and had me throw the only real tantrum I’ve managed since I got here. And they’d skipped me going into the spaces with First Squad, which I’m pretty sure was somehow linked to me being able to go home on my birthday (after all, that’s hardly the first time I’d been desperately homesick).

As I’d expected the episode started out with me bored and locked up. Even kitten-me was looking sulky. Then the TV equivalent of Maze came in and copped a serve about being transparently manipulative (though since they hadn’t shown First Squad taking me to lunch, I felt the impact was rather muted). But it seems they were catching up on some of the things we missed, since after my release from medical they showed First (or Squad Emerald, rather) taking me out into the Ena, and then Nori (Zan) and Faer (Maze) and another Squad Emerald person, Shim, doing more enhancement testing with me and promptly making me collapse when the three of them touched me at once. It switched to Nori’s point of view after that, to show the Setari being all shocked and guilt-ridden while they waited around in medical to see whether I had brain damage. Shim (who is male but not at all like Lohn) talked about how Faer had only just decided my language difficulties were because I really was from a non-Muina related planet, and fretted and paced about, but Faer was being silently white-lipped. Then the good news, that I should recover completely, and Faer told Nori she could go and it closed on her looking back at him watching me through an observation window.

"Guess setting up love triangle reason why this out of order," I told Kaoren, pulling a face. "Don’t see why can’t just stick to the actual story."

"You’re refusing to look if you haven’t seen how strongly protective Surion is toward you."

Kaoren didn’t sounded bothered by this, just pointing out a technicality. I guess Place and Sight Sight is going to spare me any misplaced jealousy.

"Maze has never once made me feel he was interested in seeing me naked," I said. Fortunately. "Was thinking more of Zan. She doesn’t need any more aggravation because of me, and this show kind of puts her in a love triangle with me and Maze."

"You’re very attached to Namara."

"Zan – that first week when was training me, I wasn’t enjoying it, and she get all this hassle because of it, and she was never impatient with me despite all that. I was an assignment, and she very private person, but she let me in a little. And for a while was only person I saw except the ones sticking needles in me," I added equably.

Something in this conversation – either Maze or Zan or needles or the reminder of me being an assignment – put Kaoren into a thoughtful sort of mood, and he touched my cheek lightly, then suggested that we meet at the canteen for lunch, and went to get changed for going out into the city.

I know that Kaoren, in his reasons for not wanting to be with me, didn’t really underline what might be the main one, worse than enhancing his Sights in sleep. So long as he’s a Setari, I’m an assignment. And to the bluesuits me jumping into bed with Kaoren isn’t a problem, it’s an opportunity. If a situation comes up where they need to control me, they’ll absolutely try and do it through him.

I arrived at the canteen first, and hesitated in the doorway, trying to decide where to sit. Kaoren and I eating lunch together on our free day isn’t precisely an announcement, but I didn’t doubt it would be noticed. Worse, my least favourite person was there with her squad.

Forel isn’t silly enough to be openly hostile to me, so she smiled and nodded as I walked past. Her squad followed her lead, and I said hi, but didn’t hang around chatting. I don’t think moving from being a valuable stray to a planet-unlocking stray has changed Forel’s opinion of me. I couldn’t quite hear what she said as I walked on to the servery, but I definitely caught Els' name, and Tsennan laughed.

In the end I sat where I usually sit, because finding the most sheltered corner wouldn’t hide me any, only make me all the more conspicuous. A couple of people from Eleventh came in, and then Kaoren, in a dark green pullover, and charcoal grey pants. It was almost disconcerting to see him in ordinary clothes, though they didn’t make him look any less dangerous. Or a fraction less hot.

I’m not the only one who thought so, either. Forel followed him up to the servery, the rest of her squad vanishing – totally ordered to go away (and Tsennan looking less than happy about it). All she did was talk to Kaoren while he was waiting for his food, looking all very professional and serious, but she touched his arm, which is such an impolite thing to do to a Place Sight talent. And then I had to laugh at myself for lighting up in outraged fury, and had a sudden mental image of me as Daffy Duck, clutching Kaoren and shouting: "Mine! Mine! Mine!" I’m pretty sure Kaoren can handle whatever she was trying to project at him, and at least she left looking not quite pleased with herself. Forel might count as the resident mean girl, but all that achieved for her was being put on a list of squads I won’t be assigned to.

It was a quiet time in the canteen, so only part of Eleventh Squad was around to give us curious looks when Kaoren sat down with me. It’s not as if our conversation (about Tare’s history) would give us away, and I don’t think Kaoren’s ever likely to be at all demonstrative in public, but we did leave together, so I expect there’s a bit of talk going around now. By that time I was less bothered by the possibility of people knowing because I was caught up in the prospect of meeting Kaoren’s sister – who is obviously very important to him – and worrying about how she was going to react to me.

We went to the area I’d waited in during the stickie lockdown and she was already there: a small, thin figure in a long skirt and a white shirt with a blue flower pattern. I hadn’t been entirely certain what to expect from Siame Ruuel, but I’d been thinking of her as a younger Taarel – a proud and commanding goddess, all antelope limbs and grace. Siame is slight and delicate, with a sweet little rosebud mouth, a wispy-short haircut, and a very straight and upright stance. She has Kaoren’s eyes though, black on black, coolly evaluating me.

Kaoren had obviously told her he was bringing someone to meet her, but not who, since there was just a moment’s surprise as she recognised me. She looked from my face to Kaoren’s as he introduced us, then nodded her head politely (Tarens don’t shake hands) and said: "It is very interesting to meet you." Siame’s voice is soft and a bit little-girl, but she is only fourteen after all (well, forty-four according to Kaoren, but I just can’t think in those terms). She’s also incredibly self-possessed and went on in a perfectly even voice: "Why do you want my brother?"

I at least had expected directness from someone related to Kaoren, and think I handled it reasonably well, for all my face went very hot. "There never simple answer to that kind of question," I said. "Other than because he is Kaoren. Best I can say is because he didn’t ask me if I was so very selfish." I looked at him, feeling rushed and exposed because I’d been finding it easier to keep our conversation away from deep-and-meaningfuls. "And you didn’t tell me to hurry, either. Thought about you differently when we back from Earth near-space, anyway."

Because I glanced at Kaoren, I missed Siame’s initial reaction. She was only looking thoughtful when she said to him: "What about Meer?"

"Meer and I have never had this kind of relationship," Kaoren replied, not apparently annoyed by the question. He bent and kissed my cheek, which I think may have been meant as something of a message to his sister, and said softly: "For me it was when you handed over that improbable pet of yours, covered in bruises and insisting on giving it a name. I’ve had to fight against you ever since." He straightened, adding: "I’ll see you after dinner."

Siame nodded a farewell, though she’d gone rather white, and they headed off for the exit gate I’m often tempted to walk through, just to see what would happen. I didn’t find Siame at all an easy person to read, but I suspect Kaoren was perfectly correct: she’s not going to like me.

Speaking of which, Meer is Taarel. I always think it’s a funny name for her, because she’ll never be a mere anything. However I want to interpret this kind of relationship, it’s obvious that even Kaoren’s sister considered them to be together. I wandered up to the roof (not properly dressed for it) to have a bit of a sulk at not being allowed out into the city, and to chew over what about Meer. And be amazed that Kaoren seems to have fallen for me while I looked like a panda. Awfully pleased, though, that it’s been so long for him. It was at the coldest part of the long night and windy so I gave up on sulking (still too many champagne bubbles for a proper sulk, anyway) and came back down to my room to play my game, making a heap of progress. I’m feeling really sleepy now, but guess I should go get dinner

Still no sign of Ghost.

Friday, July 18

Pressed

Mara spotted me heading for dinner last night, and brought me back to her apartment to eat with her and Lohn. Lohn was very funny, teasing me about "coming up for air", but also a bit pink and embarrassed about it all. He and Maze are used to thinking of me as a child to be looked after.

We’d barely settled down to eat when Maze brought all of First into channel, along with Kaoren, to warn us that my Kalasa projection and details of the platforms were about to be made public. Again KOTIS was pre-empting leaks from Kolar, and were a few minutes from a press conference.

"It will be a very full disclosure," Maze said. "All the scans of the projection barring that from the drone stationed at your test point, scans of the Chamber of Passage, and some less complete information regarding your injuries and what it is you’re able to do. Setari images are not being blocked. There’ll be a half kasse delay before the transmissions from Kolar are released, and they are the reason there is no point blocking Setari images. We are reaching the point where the image bar, at least while in uniform, is becoming pointless."

"Is – are they going to talk about the Cruzatch?" I asked.

"Yes. It’s inescapable – the building they fled through is sealed, guarded, and it’s no secret among the expeditionary force why. There has been some considerable debate as to how to handle the release of information about what it is becoming difficult to regard as anything but a direct enemy. There has always been a certain comfort derived from Ionoth being essentially unorganised. The Cruzatch not only pose an intelligent threat, but their appearance in Kalasa and use of the green stone lends itself to explanations no-one likes to credit. It’s been settled that we will disclose almost everything we know of them, barring only the trap apparently laid for you. Half-truths on this point aren’t likely to improve the situation."

"We may see another response from Nuri," Kaoren said, and the upshot of that is I’m now not allowed to go up to the roof by myself. Super annoying.

Press conferences on Tare are just mass channels with three tiers of participants – watchers, talkers, and the moderator who controlled who got to speak. Tarmian, the husky-voiced woman who’d been handling the Nuran’s visit, was acting as KOTIS' spokesperson. The reporters could barely decide which questions they wanted to ask her, they’d been flooded with so much new information.

The discussion about the Cruzatch was the thing that interested me most, and the first thing the reporters latched onto, asking if Muina’s initial disaster may have been due to them, rather than the Lantarens – that it may have been an attempted invasion from the Ena. Tarmian wouldn’t be drawn into speculating, repeating that KOTIS was continuing to search for answers in both the Ena and in the written records found in Kalasa. She happily announced that they continued to uncover references to the construction of the Pillars, along with a wealth of information about the Lantarens and their philosophies. She even looked a little teary about that, adding that over the coming months Muina and Kolar could expect to access translations of these documents, to at last start reclaiming their cultural heritage.

That switched them on to me, of course, and the projection of the Lantaren ceremony. Taren histories flip-flop about Lantarens. They were a ruling class, incredibly powerful psychics, and they not only broke the planet, they brought Ionoth down on every planet in this area of space. So they’re usually depicted as foolish, or greedy, or outright evil. Images of Kalasa at its height, and all those kids with flowers, messed with the way people were used to thinking about Lantarens.

"Is this a true glimpse of the past?" asked one reporter.

"As best as any of our experts can judge, yes," Tarmian replied. "We of course cannot say with absolute certainty the ceremony occurred, but examination of the fallen structure of the bridge, for instance, has verified that it once functioned as a waterfall – a thing certainly not obvious from a simple survey of Kalasa in its current state. We’ve cleared the central pool, which was completely covered by fallen stone and tarnish, and found the mosaic pattern visible in the projection."

"Then doesn’t KOTIS now have the key to revealing the truth about the Breaking? Have you other visions of Muina’s past?"

Tarmian shook her head. "This projection, of less than a joden, left Caszandra Devlin in a coma for two days. The exact nature of her talent set is still being discovered, and even if we come to understand it, and she to control it, the energy cost is dangerous in the extreme."

"What exactly does KOTIS mean by a tangible illusion? Is it true Caszandra previously injured herself?" Most of the media here dropped my surname pretty quickly – I’m Caszandra unless they’re feeling formal.

"Illusionists create images. Caszandra Devlin can create projections with not only a visual and auditory component, but substance. If Tsa Devlin creates a projection involving heat, it can burn her, as we unfortunately discovered. She is undergoing an intensive training course to strengthen her health and her control over her abilities. No decision can be made on whether we can risk her until she is completely recovered."

They stuck with talking about me for a while, since the nearly full story of my security pass and how it had finally been transferred to everyone else took a fair bit of discussion and explanation, even with the press release laying it out in nice, sequential order. The whole thing made me sound like a really persistent weed, cropping up everywhere no matter how hard you tried to kill it.

Kaoren arrived in the middle of this, and though we stayed in-channel, we went back to my rooms for the rest, settling into my window seat to enjoy the slow shift to dawn. Kaoren’s sister’s opinion of me was a good deal more interesting to me than the press conference, so I asked him: "What do you and Siame do when you go into the city?"

"Visit exhibitions usually, then shopping and dinner. Siame is torn between our parents' belief that the most important thing any person can do is create, to express, and the role her talents have brought her."

"Isn’t it possible to do both?" Zan had managed to find time to learn how to play a musical instrument, after all.

"Do, yes. Do well?" He shrugged. "Our energy is divided enough as it is."

"Did she decide I’m a threat?"

"You are. I will spend less time and thought on Siame because of you. The question is more whether what I gain is worth what it costs her, and she can’t judge that yet." He was giving me one of those half-lidded surveys, as if he was trying to decide himself, looking very serious. "She does not want anyone to be more important to me than she is, and she will hate you because of that, perhaps for years. But she will recover."

I didn’t know what to say to that, but Kaoren curled his fingers through mine, and that made me feel a lot better.

"The Kolaren transmissions are being released now," Maze said over the interface, as the press conference began to wind down. "They don’t add anything in regards to information – simply images."

We said goodnight to First Squad, then dropped out of channel. I had great fun undressing Kaoren, rather than him simply telling his nanosuit to go away, and he was being particularly intense. I waited till we were ready to go to sleep to record some more music for Zan, since I knew that would knock me out completely, and didn’t even bother to look at the Kolaren images until today. Lots of pictures of Kalasa, and tons of the Setari. Very few of me, for which I’m glad, though I could have lived without the little movie someone had made of a greensuit being given the duty of carrying me when they were rushing me back to Pandora after the projection. Not flattering.

There’s an earlier shot of me looking over my shoulder, wearing my beanie and my newly drawn-on coat, which seems to be the media’s new favourite image of me. And one picture of Kaoren, a really beautiful one with him standing in the central Kalasa circle looking down, which for some reason has sparked immense speculation among fans of The Hidden War over whether he’s the model for Lastier. And hordes of them are salivating over him, which doesn’t surprise me at all.

I’ve been stuck in medical all morning, having more brain scans and a new round of needles (tons of blood samples, which hasn’t put me in the greatest of moods), but at least they’ve taken my blue bandages off again. My legs still don’t look normal, but they’re a lot less uneven and seamed.

Joint training with First and Fourth soon – they want to try some two-team enhancement strategies. Not that it ever seems likely I’ll be sent out on rotation again.

Strategy session

Pretty straightforward combat training yesterday afternoon. I’d asked Mara beforehand how she dealt with being all on-duty professional with Lohn, and whether there were rules about it. She showed me the decorum-in-uniform rules, which are common sense, and I ended up behaving pretty much as I always do in these kind of sessions, the only difference being that I smiled at Kaoren when I arrived, along with all the other people I usually smile at.

After the session, Maze and Kaoren went off to have meetings as captains always seem to do – Kaoren arranging with me over the interface to meet at his apartment for dinner – and I spent a while sitting on the benches along one edge of the test room with the rest of Fourth discussing my projections, and Kalasa, and all the other news which had been released the previous day. All of the first four squads are now very well-documented, and I asked how they felt about the possibility that the image ban will be removed from in-uniform Setari.

"Given that almost all our appearances in uniform are in KOTIS facilities or in the Ena, it won’t make any substantial difference," Glade said. "We’ve had this kind of commentary since we were Kalrani, since the gate-spotters log everyone of around the right age coming out of KOTIS headquarters. And obviously image-blocking on Muina isn’t doing much."

"Is it correct that you are reviewing episodes of The Hidden War in advance?" Halla asked. She usually keeps quiet around me. Not because she’s a quiet type like Par: I think she’s just very cautious of what I represent. Or of second level monitoring.

"Maze is, but I asked if he could show them to me. Get them the day before."

"You’d be able to say what happens next even without that," Mori said, giving Halla a look I couldn’t interpret.

"Not really – they keep showing things out of order. Skipped couple of weeks in Setari facility before I went Earth’s near-space."

"What would come next? If they resumed telling it in order?" Sonn, too, didn’t seem to be asking just out of curiosity.

"Given a lot more interface rights, and an apartment rather than being locked in room in medical between training. Trained with First and Second Squad and then went on Unara Rotation with First." I paused (I was flipping through the images of my diary which I’ve recorded on my personal log). "Depends really on what’s in my leaked file. Next thing I’d consider important was that Zan told me what second level monitoring was, which no-one had bothered to mention to me before. I guess she or Maze might have filed report about that. After that – Lights Rotation, enhancement testing with Eighth, then Maze Rotation and I met Ghost."

"That’s the Ionoth cat?" Glade was watching me with a quizzical smile, but not quite looking happy. "Were you really locked up in medical?"

"Yes. They got pretty close to what I said to Maze – kept in box and taken out for tests." I shrugged. "After Maze Rotation, tested with Third Squad, then Castle Rotation. Then there was the stickie lockdown and Ghost showed up again. Then Seventh Squad, then Bridges Rotation, then Fifth Squad." I wrinkled my nose. "Then Pillar recovery, which is next time I had anything to do with Fourth, which I guess is why you’re asking. You were all unconscious by the time I got there, but I expect that episode will show what happened before that. Not likely script will follow all that anyway."

"We’ve been trying to work out a strategy to counter this," Mori said, giving Sonn a quelling glance. "All very well to be told that everyone here knows that it’s fiction, but when the interface is full of pictures of Tsee Ruuel, speculating over whether he is the template for Lastier–"

"What could you do?" I asked curiously, while trying to decide whether this would be a good or extremely awkward moment to mention that something rather major had changed.

"At this stage, gnash our teeth loudly and complain," Glade said.

"We can’t do anything," Halla said flatly. "You can."

"This isn’t the right way," Par told her, while I was busy looking surprised.

"You mean make statement to press or something?" I asked.

"No." I think Sonn and Mori had been arguing on a private channel – or just frowning at each other at random moments – but Sonn went on to say: "If you’re being given these episodes in advance, then object to this slander. Not just the most obscene excesses, but all of it, everything not true."

"Isn’t it too late?" I glanced at Mori, who was biting her lip but not quite objecting. "First thing Lastier said about me set the character, and is too well established now that even if stuck to exact truth and stopped sneering at everyone, would still be evil Lastier."

"She’s right," Glade said. "What would you suggest, Caszandra? I doubt talking to the press is going to be encouraged, but I swear if another person mutters filthy creature to me I’m going to be up on a fighting reprimand."

"Wait two weeks," I said, and stood up, well aware that I’d gone red. I really hadn’t wanted to talk to the rest of Fourth about Kaoren, not so soon.

"What happens in two weeks?" Mori looked very worried, which isn’t surprising since part of Fourth’s job is making sure I don’t get too upset.

I spoke quickly, face hotter with every word. "Given how little real privacy I have this planet, and how quickly gossip seems to spread, two weeks about longest I think will take before producers of The Hidden War frantically order rewrites to scripts and start trying to make Lastier more sympathetic. Maybe they’ll get me reform him?" I shrugged, not able to look at any of them when I added: "Don’t see how else they’ll reconcile evil Lastier with the fact that I’m sleeping with Kaoren."

I walked off immediately, wishing it was not such a long way across the training room, and was very relieved when I heard Glade burst out laughing. And Mori sent me an apologetic email before I’d reached my room, not saying very much and managing to express astonishment with every word, but at least not seeming angry. But I know, could tell, that she’s not going to be quite the same with me.

I sent Kaoren an email, just saying that Fourth had been talking to me about Lastier and I’d ended up telling them we were together. His response was "Perhaps they’ll start enjoying him now."

I hope Mara was right about them adjusting.

Saturday, July 19

Chink in the armour

Last night Kaoren asked me if I’d read my diary to him. He’d been in a quiet mood, barely speaking, which isn’t as upsetting as it sounds because it makes him very physically expressive. Just as I was drowsing off to sleep he asked me, then added: "I know it’s not a small thing. Particularly because I would need it to be complete. If you censored parts I would know, and that would truly distract me."

I’d gone very still and surprised, and was well aware that he’d know my reaction wasn’t exactly positive. "Whole thing?" I asked after a moment.

"I cannot learn your world as you have been learning mine. And I have – my Sights drive me to understand – everything I deal with, but most particularly you. Don’t decide immediately–"

"It’s okay." I propped myself up on one elbow, looking at him through the half-light. "Reading diary be embarrassing in bits, but can live with that if really important to you. Though will make me sound very whiney. Hope you have high tolerance for entry after entry about how much I wished I could stop thinking about you."

There was a lot of kissing after that, and when we did go to sleep he kept shifting so I was trapped underneath him, which is something he seems to do when he’s upset. I don’t think either of us are regretting getting together, but we’re still learning what we’re like, and one thing I have to keep in mind is how much Kaoren’s life is driven by his Sights, and what those Sights mean for the future of our together. I think that I’ll be able to cope with a relationship without secrets, but that’s the kind of optimistic thing I can tell myself right up until I have something I don’t want to admit.

My diary, at least, isn’t that big a stumbling block. Not that I didn’t spend a lot of today flipping through what I’ve written and imagining Kaoren’s reaction. And I don’t know if I’ll be able to write in exactly the same way, knowing one day he’ll hear it. I’ve kept half-starting and stopping writing this and wondering whether I’m leaving bits out that I’d normally say. Especially about what happened this morning, when I wandered out of Kaoren’s room mid-morning and ran straight into Eeli and Meht from Third.

Eeli started to smile at me, then stared at the door I’d come through. And then her eyes went huge and round, and she said: "How could you?!" and sort of wavered in one spot and then ran back into her room.

Meht, who I haven’t had much to do with at all, but who is about as stolid as Eeli is high-strung, shook her head and said: "There goes today’s training session," and got an abstract talking over the interface expression while I was busy being all mortified, and then Taarel sent me a message saying: "Come talk in my room for a joden." The door to her apartment – which is just opposite Kaoren’s – slid open and, wishing I was anywhere else, I went in.

Taarel was wearing her hair in a long braid down her back, which made her look totally not herself (and eerily like Zee). And she has a big lighted terrarium full of plants, which would have swallowed a lot of my attention if I hadn’t been so nervous about having this particular conversation. Of course, I didn’t expect her to be nasty or anything, since she’s not that kind of person at all, but I’d been spending a lot of mental energy on "what about Meer".

"Don’t mind Eeli," she said, gesturing for me to sit down on a black couch covered with a dark green throw. "She’s long enjoyed all measure of romantic dreams about Kaoren and I, and I should have prepared her for the reality."

"Dreams not entirely without basis, though?" I said, or asked, since I still wasn’t a hundred percent certain.

"Kaoren hasn’t talked to you about this at all, has he?" She sat across from me, faintly exasperated.

I shook my head. "I could have asked, guess," I said. "But felt that most probably he would have said something if you were – if there–" I broke off, feeling the heat from my face spreading all the way down my chest. I seem to do nothing but blush lately.

"If you’d stolen him from me," she finished comfortably. "Very true, he would have. But taking the position that it’s no-one’s business won’t spare you reactions like Eeli’s. No, Kaoren’s never been mine, or I’ve never been his or however you want to view it. We’ve been very…convenient to each other, but it was never deeper than that."

I found this just as clear as Kaoren’s "never had that kind of relationship", and said doubtfully: "Friends with benefits?"

That wasn’t a Taren phrase, but Taarel’s very smart and saw what I meant straight away. "Yes, you could call it that. Allies. He is not what I want, and he has never wanted to distract himself with anything serious. But we have a level of trust, and understood each other well enough to give each other an occasional physical outlet. An arrangement which, quiet as we have kept it, has been assumed as far more."

I chewed my lip. "Don’t think Eeli be happy to give up idea. Or necessarily believe."

Taarel looked amused. "Eeli will believe what I tell her. And then she will apologise very prettily to you. And then she will want to know all about how you and Kaoren decided for each other, and whether he manages to be at all romantic or if he simply tells you exactly what he wants you to do." That, of course, made me practically go purple, and she laughed. "Kaoren and I would never have survived as a couple. We both enjoy being in charge far too much. And on that note, I think I shall borrow you for the morning. My squad has swimming practice, and I want them to learn this style you taught Namara."

And to show that she is completely undisturbed by anything about me and Kaoren. Taarel really is a spectacular person. Eeli behaved exactly as predicted, and the swimming lesson went very well. The rest of Third only looked at me a little strangely, but since they adore Taarel they behaved toward me as Taarel wanted them to. I swear the woman could conquer a country in an afternoon.

I felt like saying something about Maze to her, but decided not to. It’s not nice to prod weak spots.

Sunday, July 20

Expansion

It’s going to take me several centuries to read Kaoren my diary since he asks so many questions – every second sentence seemed to contain a place name or a concept he wanted explained. We started off with a long discussion on swear words, since swearing was about all I wanted to do, stuck on a hill in a forest. So I’ve now learned several interesting Taren words which no-one else would explain to me, and Kaoren can use Earth’s most flexible (English) swearword as noun, verb and adjective. An important first step in our cultural exchange.

Then we moved on to Eloise. Tarens and Kolarens don’t use middle names, and I’d never brought it up, so my middle name came a bit out of nowhere for Kaoren. He says it is after all a piece of me, and I think was more upset about not knowing part of my name than he wanted to admit. He knew, though, that the Tarens are misspelling Cassandra, and wasn’t at all surprised that I haven’t corrected it simply because I think it’s funny and sounds cool.

I managed to read through my first day, and that was the longest conversation we’ve ever had. I think I’m going to enjoy reading to him.

Other than training with Third, yesterday was how a normal rotation day would be for us. Kaoren read reports before going into the Ena, came out tired, had to write up a bunch more reports, and was ready for sleep in the late afternoon. I had free training in the morning, then my projection training in early afternoon, and fell asleep curled up against him while he was finishing his last report. We both woke up starving, caught up on news while we ate, and then got very non-verbal for a while. And then diary reading, kissing, and sleep again.

I’m using up what little free time Kaoren used to have, and getting worried about whether he’s going to end up needing a holiday to recover from me. Though he has been sleeping deeply and well, so isn’t wandering around looking all shadowy-eyed.

This morning was stretching and weights with First Squad and Fourth Squad, which I was nervous about. But no-one in Fourth acted cross. I think they were trying to behave just as usual when I came in, and Par smiled at me, while Glade was looking highly entertained, and they all pretended they weren’t watching in fascination every time Kaoren spoke to me – though they’d have been disappointed if they’d been closer, since he was mainly telling me the same stuff Mara does about not bending my knees.

After the training session Maze, who watched me and Kaoren fairly closely as well, but seemed satisfied with how we were, told us all that First and Fourth would probably be posted back to Muina again in another couple of weeks, after the second phase of the larger squad trial. And just now (now being me in the middle of another uncomfortable session of work on my legs) they brought all the squads into a virtual meeting and announced that two senior Kalrani will be temporarily assigned to each squad, and join training sessions for a week before working with the squad on rotations.

"If eight-strength squads are successful, the assignments will be reviewed and made permanent," Maze told us. "No decision has been made as yet on what to do regarding accommodation, but the most likely options are to expand to the far side of the lift well, as with Devlin’s quarters, or to shuffle every squad upwards to make room. Either way, a second lift is being considered to facilitate urgent movement."

I’ve been reviewing the assignment list, checking out the names and talents. First has gained a guy and a girl – Kian Farn and Az Norivan – who are strongest with Ice and Water respectively. Basically rounding out primary talents they didn’t already have. Fourth gained two guys, Rada Dae and Sael Toren; Fire and Ice. Morel, the only Kalrani name I recognised among the assignment list, is part of Third, which I suspect he’ll be pleased about.

I hope they’re people I’ll like.

A store is selling copies of my coat, the one I drew the pattern from Kalasa’s door on. I’d have to save for weeks to buy one. And beanies have become extremely fashionable. The thing I resent most is that whoever did the coat they’re selling is a far better artist, and the pattern doesn’t look nearly so amateurish and uneven.

Monday, July 21

Pay day

That was the last major session of work on my legs for a while, which I’m glad of because they always leave me feeling a bit odd – they have a nanite which eats scar tissue and then a different nanite they’ve cultured from my skin which replaces the scars. The medics tell me they couldn’t just do that to start with because it’s much slower, and the initial focus is on getting the patient to not die, not making sure the patient’s legs are sexy[4]. Anyway, these cosmetic sessions involve lying there having bits of my legs eaten by nanites. No wonder I feel blah afterwards.

Since it was the night before a rotation, I went and curled up in Kaoren’s room, finishing off one of the books he recommended, then wondering whether I should buy more clothes and keep some in his rooms. I was contemplating the small amount of money I had left from my allowance and feeling very grumpy about the number of people making big profits off of me without even saying thanks when – almost as if he were psychic! – Tsur Selkie sent me a channel request and said: "At what point were you going to mention that you continue to receive only the Displaced Aliens Stipend?"

He sounded genuinely curious, so instead of telling him next time I met an intrepid girl reporter, I said: "When I needed to buy something I couldn’t afford."

"Is that cultural?" he asked, surprising me by not saying a few crisp words and breaking connection. "Some kind of taboo regarding receiving payment?"

"In a way, a bit," I said, having not really thought about it. "If passer-by see someone in trouble, and saves their life, very crass to ask for a fee. I would be very strange person if turned around and say that because I unlock Muina, expect to be given lots of money. But working with Setari – whose job it is to save people – different situation. And helping fill in Rana Junction Gate, completely different situation. Be embarrassing asking to be paid, but would have pointed out eventually that if going to treat me like an employee, very mean not to give me a wage. Waiting to see if anyone notice."

"The administrative body of the Displaced Aliens Fund noticed, and have requested a refund of payments received since you were returned to KOTIS."

I had to laugh. "Tarens very stingy people."

Selkie had reverted to being a bluesuit, though, and simply said: "You’ll be classified as captain for salary purposes," and broke connection.

So I’m now an actual employee of KOTIS, more or less – and have an awful lot of money, since Setari captains seem to get paid plenty and I had more than a Taren year’s worth built up (minus repaying my stipend, and a whole bunch of taxes). Kaoren, when I told him about it, said that the things I find funny are liable to drive Selkie insane.

He also told me to check my schedule, which had been updated. First and Fourth are going to take me into the Ena for my next few testing sessions, using the opportunity to break in their new members by clearing Ionoth in near-space. This dual-purpose use of time was typically Kaoren and I laughed and told him that if I ever wanted to drive him insane I’d just force him to do something, anything, inefficiently. He went unexpectedly intense in response, and kissed me really hard. I guess I probably already drive him insane.

We haven’t pushed each other yet, haven’t had an argument or done anything guaranteed to irritate the other, but this – he and I – has been working better than I could have hoped given that he’s a driven perfectionist and I’m, well, a stop and smell the roses type. I’m finding myself unexpectedly settled rather than plagued with doubts.

We didn’t make love last night, though; the first time in the eight whole days since we got together. Kaoren could tell my legs had left me very queasy this time round, and I think his Sights mean that unless I’m truly into it, it’s not going to happen. No faking allowed. Instead we watched one of Kaoren’s favourite movies (this incredibly sad and smart and beautiful story about a woman outwitting a mad AI), and then I read more diary and we talked about the schoolies week and going to high school in Australia, and then experimentally eating things to see whether they kill you.

My first four days on Muina. I was so alone.

I had a nightmare later: not one of the Sight ones, just dreaming of walking along that river and never being found. I cried a little, when Kaoren woke me up, because I really don’t care that much about not being allowed out into the city, or the size of my pay packet, or anything but not being so scared and isolated. And this growing confidence I have about Kaoren just underlines to me that, despite how nice people were to me, I stayed being scared and isolated long after I was rescued.

Nearly time to go into the Ena.

Under Observation

Maze introduced me to the new squad members (both First’s and Fourth’s) before we went into the Ena. They were all around my age and being extremely correct and proper, as you’d expect for Kalrani who’d suddenly found themselves joining senior squads.

Kian Farn, joining First, was too guarded for me to get any real impression of him. He’s around average height (given that most people here are tall), he said practically nothing, and he was very watchful and expressionless, measuring everything that was happening around him. Az Norivan has a wonderful curling smile, and although not nearly at Eeli-level seems to be a fairly up type of person.

Rada Dae, Fourth’s new Fire (plus Telekinesis) talent, and Sael Toren with a primary of Ice, are absolute stereotypical fire and ice personalities, except Dae has dyed his hair dark blue with frosted white tips, which is a complete failure to conform to the Fire colour scheme. But Dae is all energetic and enthusiastic, outgoing and chatty, while Toren is coldly reserved and very down-to-business, so otherwise they slot right into their pigeonholes. Toren will probably appreciate being in Fourth because Kaoren’s so very focused and efficient. Oddly, he doesn’t remind me of Kaoren at all – Kaoren is more detached than cold, while Toren was definitely of the coolly superior and does not think much of you cold.

Though none of the new squad members were being nasty or grouchy, I didn’t get the impression any of them were at all pleased to be placed in First and Fourth, which confused the hell out of me for a while. I don’t usually ask Kaoren about staffing, since gossiping about the people he supervises isn’t something he’s likely to do, but interrupted his report writing just now to say: "New people all captain candidates? Appointments to First and Fourth only temporary?"

"It will be interesting to see how long it takes them to reach the same conclusion," Kaoren said. "We’re not ready to form additional squads, let alone send them out raw to face the increasing numbers we’re having to deal with. After a year working actively in the Ena, most of the additional squad members will be considered for reformation into Fifteenth and Sixteenth. Some will remain, and perhaps become part of Seventeenth and Eighteenth in turn. Eight-strength squads give us an opportunity for advanced training."

"Why not tell them that beforehand?"

"Nothing has been firmly decided. And all captains must learn to follow the lead of their seniors." He shifted me a little closer to his side before going back to his report writing. He isn’t at all keen on me being out of reach just now, and that’s the Nurans' fault. If I end up having a permanent guard assigned to me even while I’m in KOTIS, I’m going to be severely annoyed.

The testing session itself was very interesting. Maze brought a drone and a scan-chair along, and both squads went up to the roof to a spot where they’d apparently stuck a drone in real-space as well. Zee, Alay and Halla stayed with me while First and Fourth separated and went hunting over the massive-pile-of-blocks expanse of Konna. They rarely have to hunt out over the water, since the Ionoth tend to drown if they come through out there. Even the flying Ionoth gravitate toward the land masses, which only makes sense because Tare’s storms helpfully rip them apart if they don’t find some level of shelter.

Zee had me start out making projections from memory. And that was so much easier than it is in real-space I could scarcely believe it. I did a few minutes of the first episode of a favourite of Mum’s, a BBC documentary called Planet Earth, and then took a break, but was nowhere near to passing out as I would have been in real-space. A quick sprint, stop for a rest, then fine to go on.

"Try an object now," Zee said, putting her breather down in front of me.

This was harder to achieve. Projecting images takes a bit of mental effort to start off, but it does work a lot like pressing play. Making the breather is different in ways it’s really hard to put into words – kind of like those magic eye puzzles where you have to sort of unfocus your eyes, but I needed to unfocus my mind. I find it easier when I close my eyes and someone starts reading out a long description, guiding what I’ll project.

Still, after a bit of frowning – and nearly making a mug of hot chocolate – I produced a breather which Zee could pick up, but which went away as soon as I stopped concentrating on it. And yet my origami cranes are still going strong. My talents seem to me very contradictory.

Since I was still feeling fine – no headache, just a bit of an elevated heartbeat which went away after a rest – Zee had me go on to visualising a room she described. This was a restaurant, a fancy one which seemed to be at shift change – closed for a half-kasse for a thorough clean and refresh. Five people were moving about, whisking fresh cloths over tables, setting out table spices and long blue heated centrepieces where platters of food would be set to keep warm. Two of them were chatting about whether one of the girls should go out with someone, briskly continuing their work all the time. They didn’t seem able to see us, but when Halla picked up a glass they noticed that immediately, and pointed, then asked each other which of them was the Telekinetic. But they could more or less see Halla’s shadow, now they were looking directly at her, and came and crowded around her, talking excitedly.

I let the projection lapse then (to Halla’s relief, I suspect), and shrugged when Zee asked me how I was feeling. "Could do with a bit of a rest," I said, then opened a private channel to her, and Maze and Kaoren, who were distant but within range thanks to the drone’s relay.

"There’s someone watching us," I said. "On the roof just above. They came during the last projection."

"The Nuran?" Maze asked, while Zee looked down to stop herself from looking up.

"Not Inisar," I said. "It’s no-one I know. I looked right at where they’re standing but I couldn’t see them."

"Does not register with Combat Sight," Zee said, moving so she was standing within touching distance of me. I took out my water flask, though I could tell by the way Alay was frowning at me that I wasn’t acting particularly naturally.

"Warn Annan the moment you detect any movement," Maze said crisply. "Ruuel, your squad is closer. We’ll hang back in case this is an opening of communication." He brought us all into the one channel, saying: "There’s an unknown at the test site. We’re returning, but do not attack unless signalled."

"Halla, enhance and scan the roof above with Place," Kaoren said, voice as calmly even as if we were all in one of the training rooms preparing for a test session.

Halla, with just the faintest hint of confusion, moved close enough to brush my arm with her fingertips, then stood gazing upward. I was watching her face, and saw her lips part slightly, then she said, "Streaming," over the interface, and we all got to look at the barest blurry echo of a shape of a shape standing gazing down at us.

It was pretty hard to tell, but I thought it was a woman. There was a bump by one leg which could have been the hilts of two swords worn in the same way as Inisar’s.

"Is invisibility a talent all on its own?" I asked Zee, since everyone staring upward made pretending we didn’t know the woman was there pretty pointless.

"It’s Illusion-casting," Zee replied, not shifting her attention away from the place the watcher occupied. "Very few Illusionists can manage it."

I was briefly distracted wondering if Nils could, and if he crept about being invisible, but found I was annoyed and said flatly: "Nurans don’t have very good manners."

Zee put an admonitory hand on my shoulder, and I sighed, then tried to remember what it had felt like when Inisar had spoken in my head. The figure above us shifted as Fourth Squad rose up through the gaps in the half-formed buildings below us, and I tried mentally saying: "Not allowed to talk?"

There was no reaction. I decided not to push it, since for all I knew I could be revealing things which would endanger Inisar. And then Fourth was there, spreading in a semi-circle behind me, Kaoren at my other shoulder.

Zee dropped her hand so Kaoren could enhance, and then she said: "Caszandra has a point. To watch, hidden, is hardly courteous."

All this achieved, though, was to make the Nuran leave.

"Teleported," Kaoren said, and Halla and I both nodded.

That killed the testing session. Maze took me back inside with First as an escort while Fourth tried to track the Nuran. Zee and Alay stayed with me until Kaoren returned, and I suspect if I wasn’t handily sleeping with Captain All-the-Sights, I’d have Halla on my couch. According to Maze, it’ll be a while before a decision is made about whether to go ahead with these sessions. That the Nurans can shield themselves from Combat Sight is something none of the Setari like.

KOTIS sent a ship to Nuri after Inisar first showed up, and were basically "escorted off the premises" by a couple of very uncommunicative Nurans. I can just picture tiny flying samurai staring down the Diodel or even the Litara. I bet Inisar could pull that off.

Whatever the Nurans want with me, they plainly don’t intend to start cooperating with Tare, which no-one thinks is a good sign. Kaoren’s really bothered by today’s (non-)appearance.

Tuesday, July 22

Crack

A day which started mildly, with nothing but training with Fourth scheduled. Martial arts in the morning – everyone pairing off and trying to hit each other. I was paired with Sonn, and Kaoren left me to her while critically watching everyone else. Toren and Dae were paired to start with, and Kaoren didn’t seem to pay any particular attention to them, just swapped them out after a while to fight Glade and Mori.

I still can’t tell how good people are at fighting – certainly not when they’re practicing rather than quickly taking their opponents down. Toren and Dae didn’t seem to me to be obviously better or worse than Glade or Mori, but the way their expressions changed – Dae acting intense and determined and Toren going all grimly quiet – I guess there must have been some kind of difference. Kaoren spoke to them briefly – five terse words – during a rest break and both of them looked like they wished they were anywhere else.

Most of Fourth Squad are twenty (I refuse to think of Kaoren as sixty), while Toren and Dae are a couple of years younger. You can’t actively serve as a Setari until you’ve hit fifty – nearly seventeen – which is the qualifying age on Tare for trying to pass the adulthood exams. Most Kalrani aren’t promoted until they’re closer to eighteen. Toren and Dae no doubt knew Kaoren’s reputation, and Fourth’s generally as a squad which focuses on close combat, but I think they were expecting less of a gap.

Still, with me around they never had to worry about being the worst in the room. I was genuinely trying, and I am a little better than before, but I always seem to make absolutely the wrong choice in response to an attack, and I think Sonn was having to spend a lot of effort to not wipe the floor with me.

The best part of martial arts training for me is seeing everyone in the martial arts training outfits. They apparently wear these because the nanosuits give too much cushioning, and can sprout weapons. They do training using the nanoliquid blades as well, of course, but work on the basic combat moves separately. Mori seems to be the best fighter in the squad beside Kaoren – or at least he sparred with her seriously toward the end of the session.

After that we changed and jogged over the stairs. I dropped far behind, unsurprisingly, but Kaoren stayed with me while the rest of the squad went ahead, and fortunately he didn’t turn into a drill-sergeant, letting me rest halfway up the longer flights of stairs. I told him it would be a great workout for him if he carried me, but he just asked me deadpan if I thought he wasn’t getting enough exercise.

"Am I going to be babysat for long?" I asked. "Haven’t failed to notice that Halla keeping close to me even when getting changed."

"That will depend on the Nuran," Kaoren said, not bothering to pretend I’m not under full-time guard. It was pretty obvious I’d been switched to training with Fourth because it has two Place Sight talents.

"Would Nuran really have any chance of wandering about undetected inside? Doors wouldn’t open, elevators wouldn’t work."

"And scanners are harder to guise against. But shielded rooms won’t necessarily keep a teleporter out, though it increases the risk." He tucked a straying strand of hair behind my ear, adding: "Very likely we will be relocated to Muina ahead of schedule, since even Nurans would find the Ddura an insurmountable obstacle. And, yes, that won’t change the fact that you are going to be constantly guarded for the foreseeable future."

"I don’t like that it was a different Nuran than Inisar," I said, sighing at the thought of constant guarding – for all that a large part of that constant guarding is going to involve just me and Kaoren and probably not a lot of clothing. "Do you think they found out he gave me that book?"

"It’s a possibility." He asked whether my legs hurt, and we had a brief, serious discussion about the conflicts between supervising me and sleeping with me. Kaoren prefers my training to be with First, but that I be assigned to Fourth whenever I go anywhere risky. I’m fine with either, just so long as no-one decides to station us on different planets again.

The afternoon was mixed combat training with Fourth and First, with Nils from Second along to make illusions for everyone to attack. He was being oddly quiet again, and didn’t even tease me about Kaoren, though I could tell he knew by the way he watched when Kaoren was talking to me. Surprisingly, I don’t think the gossip has spread very far. Other than Kaoren and I having lunch together one day, we haven’t been seen out publicly, and I guess those who know haven’t been telling.

Even Toren and Dae aren’t in that loop. Fourth Squad have been politely welcoming toward their two new members, but weren’t being relaxed and themselves during break times with them. They were well aware that Toren and Dae didn’t like that they’d been assigned to Fourth, and naturally they weren’t pleased with that. Or it could be they were still being quiet and non-chatty on account of me sleeping with Kaoren, but I don’t think it’s quite the case. Sonn seemed a little more like I was an accepted part of the team than she usually is, and I even had a bit of a conversation with Halla about Nurans and what they thought they were achieving by not joining forces with the other ex-Muinan civilisations.

And then, halfway through the two squad training session, the swoops Nils had been projecting abruptly disappeared. The look on his face, when we turned to find out why, was such straightforward shock that First and Fourth reacted by gathering as if to fight off an attack, but then Ketzaren said: "Unara."

I was a beat behind everyone else checking the news feeds, and the first channel I went to only seemed to be showing me a waterfall. A waterfall and a chair. That was from a scanner, but the feed switched almost right away to someone’s personal vision. They were in a triple-tiered atrium full of plants and there was water pouring down from a gash, a long, wide crack, in the whitestone ceiling. And there was a woman hanging down, tangled in, I don’t know, some kind of cable, with the water pouring past her.

It had only just happened, too recent even for the bluesuits to have worked out any orders, but First and Nils ran anyway, so they’d be ready at the nearest lock. Kaoren said: "Take lead," to Mori and she, Par, Glade and our two Kalrani went, while Kaoren, Halla and Sonn stayed to protect me from Invisible Nurans. I had a couple of moments' angst about that, then realised that they probably wouldn’t have been sent anyway. Sight talents and Lightning wouldn’t be very useful when what you were fighting was Tare’s weather.

It’s only now, hours later, that any sort of clear exterior view of the damage has been available. It doesn’t even look like that much, just a tiny crack in the endless blocky meringue of Unara. Other than some falling injuries, it’s likely that it wouldn’t have been anything like so bad, except this is Tare, and the daily mega-storm was dumping half an ocean on Unara’s roof.

I called the crack tiny, but it exposed over two thousand Unaran apartments to one of Tare’s full-scale storms. Bad enough, but add to that the countless gallons of water draining over the vast expanse of the roof, some diverted into water collection channels, but most following whatever was the easiest course down to the ocean.

In the first few minutes after the crack opened, a lot of people evacuated, thankfully. But others moved to inner rooms, or were stopped by exit corridors split in two or elevators not functioning. The Unaran authorities, finding corridors and atriums suddenly awash, had little choice but to seal the area as best they could. And the person who was transmitting on the news channel I’d linked to – it was a teenaged kid named Konstan Trabel – drowned.

Tarens can’t swim. There’s no lakes on Tare, no rivers or beaches, and the only swimming pool is in the Setari facilities. When you live in permanent air-conditioning there’s no particular drive to get wet as a form of recreation, and Taren cities don’t really have the space to spare for lots of water-sports. I’m not sure many people could have successfully swum out of a room filling with furniture and pot plants even if they’d been raised in the water.

Back when the 2004 tsunami hit I remember staying glued to the TV, watching over and over sequences filmed from balconies, of walls of mud and village sliding past. Knowing that people had to be in that churning mass, glad not to see any, unable not to look. On Tare, the interface lets those people transmit direct to their families, or social network, or news channel, and unless they block you, you can watch and hear and shudder until the images fill with grey or wriggling sparkles of light, and stop.

I switched to a channel which wasn’t live-streaming death.

It didn’t take very long for the Setari squads to reach Unara. The biggest delay was getting from their entry space to the particular suburb being flooded. The Telekinetics and Teleporters and the Levitation talents joined various drones and emergency rescue workers and a handful of middle-strong civilian talents working to get people out. Every Ice talent KOTIS could send went to the roof and, with the strongest of the Telekinetics bracing them against the gale, formed dams and channels and barriers to route the water away. That was immensely frustrating to watch, knowing how much quicker they could do it if I was there.

Still, they got it done, and the ice held more or less despite the driving rain. There’s four squads still stationed at Unara, helping with the job of putting up a temporary seal before the next storm hits.

Far fewer people died than during the Dohl Array attack. But Tare is – I don’t know how to put this – wounded in a way which it wasn’t when the problem was a massive which the Setari could fight and kill. Because the crack was caused by a gate. Not even a huge gate. A gate the size of a car tyre.

Even though the Tarens have refined their whitestone nanomaterial so that it can take a lot of weight, Unara is still a huge, heavy place. I got a bit lost among Taren terms more complex than load-bearing and distributed force, but the diagrams made clear enough that far bigger parts of Unara could split or collapse if only a relatively small part of its core structure was damaged. The news channel I was watching had a fine old time showing projections of what would happen if gates opened at dramatically critical points. And then there was the question of air routes, the possibility of one of the tanz clipping a gate, and countless graphs plotting the increase in gate openings, and estimates for what Tare would be dealing with in ten, five, even one Taren year. Open statements on every channel that within four Taren years life here will have changed substantially, and that’s not even factoring in the continual increase in Ionoth numbers.

It’s like Tare has abruptly woken up to a nightmare which has been happening all along.

Kaoren is a wreck – Sight Sight had shown him way too much, and he’s been off talking with Mori, who had a person die just as she was teleporting him. We’ve been discussing our own anti-nightmare strategy, just to get to tomorrow, and after I’ve finished writing this up we’re going to watch the next preview episode of The Hidden War together, and after that hopefully we’ll both be too exhausted to stay awake. Then we’ll step through a Sights exercise together, and I’ll try not to drown us both in my inevitable reaction projection.

Wednesday, July 23

Keep on keeping on

They’ve moved up our departure for Muina to the day after tomorrow, whether because of the Nuran or because yesterday pushed them into being not so reluctant to use me. I think everyone’s looking forward to heading back, overwhelmingly keen to do something, anything, which might result in a solution. It’ll just be exploration at first, and I’ll probably actively work with First and Fourth.

What I need to focus on is no more meltdowns, no more injuries. I can’t do anything about being irreplaceable, but at the least I have to stop putting myself in medical.

Despite all that went on yesterday, First and Fourth went ahead with their scheduled dual eight-strength squad rotation today. Kaoren warned me ahead of time that they’d likely be out for a long stretch – one of the huge advantages dual squads give exploration teams is the extra Ena manipulation to ensure gates are locked, so they can go further without tiredness making it too dangerous. If they’d been able to get permission they would have taken me with them, since I represent the ability to cast very deeply into the Ena, and Kaoren’s hoping that some time in the future they’ll be able to work with me again, attempting to locate Pillars. But no go.

They were out most of the day, too – nearly six hours, which is an immense amount of time for Setari. I was adopted by Third again for the day, since Tol Sefen has Place Sight. Taarel kept us busy, and the conversation away from Unara, but there was a level of stress sitting under everything. It’s not like anything’s really more urgent than it was two days ago, but it sure feels like we can’t waste any more time training.

Third were a good group to distract me, though. Third’s two new members, Shin Morel and a girl called Elory Tedar, plainly can’t believe their luck in being made part of the squad and are quite ready to worship at Taarel’s feet, which of course means the regular squad members consider them people of taste and discernment. Eeli continued on with being totally fascinated by the idea of me and Kaoren, and though she did try not to pry too openly, she really really wanted to know what drew us together. I don’t know what Taarel said to her, but she seems to have completely accepted that Kaoren isn’t someone Taarel wanted a romance with.

It must be so weird for Taarel, defending the girl who made off with her convenient lover. Although, if she really is in love with Maze, then it might have come as a relief to her to know that whatever people have been saying about me and Maze wasn’t true. No-one’s actually told me that there was gossip, but I’ve started to realise there must have been some, that the direction they’re taking in The Hidden War is what some people thought was happening. The episode Kaoren and I watched last night follows my first rotation with First Squad, and it’s again hinting that the Maze-equivalent character is feeling all conflicted about me. I’m pretty sure Maze has never even considered it.

After lunch, since Third was scheduled to do elementals training, Taarel assigned Tol and Eeli more obviously as my babysitters and we went back to my apartment to find a huge pile of packages waiting – the result of a post-getting paid spending spree.

Tol thought it hugely funny that I’d been getting the equivalent of pocket money, and the mood lightened considerably. I think babysitting me, helping me unwrap packages, was a handy distraction for them as well.

Fortunately I’d opted against buying a whole heap of racy nightwear. I could just imagine Eeli’s reaction to that. Along with clothes I’d picked up another couple of blank books, and a big pack of imported Kolaren permanent markers, which I spent a lot of the afternoon putting to good use on my coat while we chatted. Tol had seen the copies of my coat for sale, and asked if that was why I was altering the pattern, but it was mainly that I’d never finished it in the first place because my permanent marker had run out of ink. I extended it about halfway down the back and a little onto the arms, and although it’s not perfect I do like it.

When Kaoren walked in we were all three sitting on the floor around my coffee table, me trying to even up the wobbly bits of my coat’s pattern, and Eeli and Tol trying to write their names on pieces of paper. They both hastily got to their feet, though I suspect Eeli was mainly hoping for a better view of Kaoren’s expression, but he simply told them they could go and waited till they had.

He brought dinner, and after eating made a valiant attempt to finish off his reports, but has fallen asleep on the couch.

Thursday, July 24

Getting serious

There was a fantastic thunderstorm last night. I turned down all my lights and watched it while Kaoren slept, and eventually fell asleep myself. It was still going when he woke me with kisses in the pitchy dark, and we undressed each other between flashes of lightning. That was impossibly intense, overwhelming, and I was shaking afterwards and clung to him.

And Kaoren said: "You need to spend more time on your studies."

"What?" A whole world of incredulity went into that word, and he wouldn’t have needed Place Sight to tell him exactly what I thought of him saying something so…so prosaic right after something I’d found so amazing. I don’t remember ever being more furious.

To my shock he laughed, a surprised spurt. "That sounded very out of place didn’t it? The tail-end of my thoughts." He paused, and lightning showed me his expression, a combination of dismay and amusement and something rather more. "I can’t marry you unless you pass the adult competency exams," he explained, and then moved forward so he was talking directly into my ear, his voice soft and completely serious. "Are you certain yet, Cassandra?"

"Yes." I was breathless, dizzy with the sudden reversal of fury, but totally sure. It hasn’t even been two weeks, but all the past days have done is confirm what I’ve felt for months.

My Mum would be silently screaming about now, and working out how to convince me that getting married at eighteen is a terrible idea, and that really I need to spend a lot more time before I could decide if Kaoren and I are a permanent thing, and that both of us were probably just reacting to the drama at Unara, and should take things much slower.

But this is Tare.

Tare doesn’t have an equivalent to Vegas. To get married, Kaoren and I both have to have passed the adult competency test, and then register an intention to marry, and then live together for five Taren years before applying for permission to hold a commitment ceremony. And if we break up temporarily in the middle of that, we have to wait longer. I’ll be twenty by the time we can consider arranging for the ceremony.

So, yeah, super-romantic place, Tare. The Paris of the stars.

It was late into our shift when we stopped to shower and eat, and then Kaoren spent a while celebrating our not-quite-engagement by finishing his reports. Even with he and Maze sharing the work, going into new spaces means he has a ton of post-rotation work. I spent the time researching what the adult competency test involved. It wasn’t an ultra-brainy sort of test, more like social studies: knowing laws and customs, and basic biology and health care. Not very much in the way of sciences, but some history. The laws and customs are the ones which are most likely to trip me up – Tare has a by-law for everything, particularly about babies and who can have them. All the red tape about marriage and so forth is designed to delay when people have babies. There’s just not enough room on this planet. Which makes them sensible laws, I guess, but they’re also irritatingly weighted toward smart, talented people. People like the Ruuels, or Isten Notra’s family, are more likely to be given permission to have second and third children.

This got right up my nose. I can recognise the reason for it, but I kept wondering about all the people I knew who wouldn’t exist if Australia had a law like that, and furiously resenting the idea of ever having to apply for kids myself, even though I’m sure the Supa Speshul Magick Gurl will be encouraged to have lots and lots of babies, even without counting the value of Kaoren’s Sights.

At least Mum would be pleased to know that I’m planning at least ten years of pouncing on Kaoren before even thinking about interrupting our sex life with kids. After reading all those by-laws, I’m considering doubling that to twenty.

Once I stopped being irritated I continued ploughing through the recommended reading for the test, getting a little distracted by the laws for when two men or two women want to have babies, and how advanced genetic engineering can open up lots of possibilities. And then I watched a hysterically funny documentary called: "No, We Will Not Raise The Ceilings" from back when Tare first began to make real advances into genetics and the first thing vast numbers of people did was tweak their kids for taller.

After he’d done with his reports, Kaoren asked me to read some more of my diary to him. It’s becoming an important ritual between us, and doing wonders for my ability to speak Taren – my grammar is improving, though my pronunciation is still bad and I miss a lot of the nuances of word meanings. That session, though, I felt so small describing how horrible I’d been to Mum, and I’m really not looking forward to reading out a few of the things I know are coming up. We went off onto a tangent, though, circling around Kaoren’s relationship with his own mother. He says all his family are too alike not to recognise the same fault in each other. An awareness of superiority. He curled the words off his tongue, sounding amused.

"It’s an easy trap to fall into. Sight Sight can make the preoccupations of others seem such useless things. My mother, my brother, taught me what it feels like to have what is important to me dismissed. It’s a lesson I’m glad I learned, but I am not likely to forgive them for it."

"Yet you keep your brother’s pictures in your room."

"He made them for me." Kaoren took a deep breath. "For a long time Arden was to me what I am now to Siame, but he was furious with me for choosing to treat being Setari as my art. The pictures are an apology of sorts, since he has come to see that doing this is something I value. My parents continue to push me to resign once I have served the minimum tenure."

Kaoren is not very detached about his family, and seems to deal with it by having little to do with them. And a lot to do with Siame, who he has taken out into the city again because he won’t see her for a while. He wants to tell her in person that we’re going to get engaged. I’m not sure if he’s going to even tell his parents, and doesn’t seem keen on introducing me to them. I’m not going to push.

I was hoping I could study during the morning and take the adult competency exam while he was gone, but I did a run-through on a mock exam and while it’s not hard – I nearly passed – the random and broad nature of the questions means there’s a big chance I won’t pass if I try and rush into it, and I can’t take the test again for a full Taren year if I fail. I’m not sure if I can take it on Muina, or apply to get married while I’m there, for that matter.

I know it’s silly to be impatient. All getting engaged immediately would do is get me a bunch of people asking if I really want to rush into things. I think I just want everyone to know that he’s mine. Very shallow.

I’ve been stuck in medical all afternoon with Jeh from Second being babysitter. Jeh doesn’t have Place Sight, which I guess means they’re getting more relaxed about the Nuran. My legs look almost normal. There’s some faint patchiness, but they’re going to give me a break before doing any more work on them, so that the new skin can settle. The new patches are obvious because they’re hairy – baby-fine hair though, which is good since the medics tell me I can’t use the depilatories on them yet.

Tons of brain scans and needles, which never puts me in a good mood. And–

* * *

Back in my room now. Maze dropped by medical to visit me and take over being babysitter. He was looking outright exhausted, his mouth dragging down at the corners, since unlike the rest of First and Fourth he hadn’t had a free day, and had been attending meetings and working on balancing squad assignments for the push forward on Muina.

I haven’t really talked to Maze for ages. I was glad to see he’s his normal self with me, and answered my questions about the things First and Fourth have been assigned to do while on Muina – and which ones I’ll be allowed to participate in. Then I asked him if he thought I’d be able to take the adult competency exam while I’m on Muina, and he spent a few minutes researching that, and said no, not yet. Because it involves a secure environment hosted by a particular government department (basically child welfare), it can’t be done within Muina’s environment.

Maze paused after he told me, because there’s not many reasons why I’d suddenly want to do the adult competency exam, then gave me one of his super smiles and said: "It’s been good to see you so happy, Caszandra. And you have until we reach the gate tomorrow to do the exam, if waiting until we return from Muina seems too large a burden."

He spent the rest of the afternoon chatting to me about Tare’s laws, coaching me in questions I was likely to encounter on the test. I think he was glad to concentrate on something other than Unara, and tearing gates and hordes of Ionoth, and whether we’ll find any way to fix it all.

We leave for Muina late morning tomorrow.

Friday, July 25

Making it official

I passed! I did the exam during the pre-flight preparation and take-off. It was a bare pass – I hit a run of questions which I couldn’t even guess what might be the right answer – but I still passed.

The exam environment makes it so you can’t receive any communication (even almost completely blocking what you can see or hear in real-space) and it took about half an hour to complete. When I opened my eyes I could see Kaoren sitting on the seat beside mine, watching me steadily. I think he watched me the entire time, reading my body language to see how much trouble I was having.

It takes about five minutes to get the result, and since we were alone I snugged myself next to Kaoren. We didn’t say anything at all, but he was unusually tense, and when I got the email with my result, he knew straight away from my reaction and half-crushed my hand before he leaned down and kissed me – something he’s not done before anywhere there was a chance random people could see us. I wasn’t the only one all impatient.

The complete absence of squads was kind of suspicious – you’re allowed to go to the lounges during flights, but it’s common for at least a few squad members to just hang around on their pod-seats. Still, the interface would have told everyone I was taking an exam, if not which exam, so they could have left just to give me some quiet. But I suspect Maze.

Kaoren sent me the link to the form we had to fill out, and since the interface knows all the form-filling stuff about me already, I only had to read through the getting engaged version of terms and conditions and choose Yes a few times and then Kaoren and I were engaged. A far cry from a fancy ring, but certainly more official.

We went and told everyone then; a rare occasion for Kaoren to bring his personal affairs into discussion with his squad. It’s really embarrassing to do things like that, though everyone seemed pleased and not particularly surprised and I was hugged a lot, and Kaoren’s squad at least briefly treated him like a peer and congratulated him. We got into an interesting discussion on different types of ceremonies, and then Lohn started laughing and said to check the news and of course my name showing up in the intention to marry register hadn’t passed unnoticed for more than a few minutes. The best headline was "Devlin to marry Lastier!"

Good timing for the trip to Muina so I can start ignoring the news again. Almost through the rift. Eager to get things done.

New digs

Muina’s first set of Setari quarters have sprouted since my last visit, with accommodation for six eight-strength squads (or eight six-strength squads, as originally planned) and a few spares, as well as support staff accommodation, kitchens, medical, training areas, and common rooms. Someone’s plainly been having fun playing architect. Instead of yet another big white box, they’ve produced a round step pyramid with windows and balconies everywhere. It’s built into the hill at the southernmost tip of Pandora, and I mean that literally. The hill is still there, but with expanses of whitestone and glass between the grass and trees – or snow at the moment. It reminds me of a cross between a hobbit hole and Parliament House in Canberra (no giant flagpole though). All this in less than a month. Nanotechnology is amazing – they basically injected a building into a hill, no digging required.

The structure is the easy part, and they’ve had people installing fittings and big pumps and generators (I don’t in the slightest understand the technology behind Taren power generators, except that it’s not fossil fuel based) and the like so that there’s power and water and lights and heating. It’s still missing windows and equipment in a lot of places. The Litara brought a massive amount of cargo with us, including the first shipment of furniture for the Setari quarters, and when we arrived late afternoon Pandora-time the Telekinetics helped unload the ship and then everyone carried furniture and stores and supplies about, and moved in.

The pinksuit in charge of the fit-out really annoyed me by being shocked because I picked up a box. She really expected me to sit there and watch everyone else lugging stuff around. I told her that it was a requirement of my culture to help, heh.

The main common room is fantastic, with the most incredible view west out over the lake, and glimpses north and south thanks to this huge curving patio and floor to ceiling window/doors (though doubled-glass airlocks and way too cold to want to have open at the moment). Once we’d unpacked the furniture and had something to sit on, we all (First, Fourth, Twelfth, Fourteenth, and Squad Three from Kolar, who have been traded in for Squad One) sat about having an informal meal and chatting, catching up on the latest developments of three planets, all the while watching a gorgeous wrap-around sunset.

Squad Three has one guy (Noran) and five girls (Brez, Olan, Mittaha, Tuse, and Turian). Turian’s their captain, and comes across as amiable and polite, but not quite ready to be friends with a bunch of Tarens. But it wasn’t a bad atmosphere. Compared to the recently-promoted Kalrani, and Squad Three, Zan was relaxed and talkative. Of course, Twelfth and Fourteenth weren’t exactly casual, except for Lara, who is always chilled out. Even Fourth, working with First so closely lately, is still a bit on duty when sitting about chatting with them. I’ve come to realise Maze and Zee are basically the junior Setari’s peer supervisors, and First sets the standard for the other squads, so they’re really caught up in not making a fool of themselves in front of them.

And Kaoren, for all he accepted a further round of congratulations, is never going to be casually social with vast hordes of people. He just isn’t interested, I think. But, still, it was a nice meal (a sampling of local plants mixed in with the standard fare, product of the greenhouse) and everyone ended up looking pleased and upbeat, the shadow of developments on Tare finally lifting. Like me they’re eager to get back to hunting solutions.

Picking out rooms came next, and was fun. There’s several circular floors' worth of quarters around a central atrium arrangement – accessible by both stairs and elevators. Those with Levitation or Telekinesis really like this because they just fly up to the floor they want to get to.

Not all of the rooms have balconies – those poke out of the lakeward face of the hill, but the hill itself rises a little higher than the building and joins up with other hills to the east, and on each floor there’s a couple of rooms with no windows at all, for those Tarens who just aren’t comfortable with having so much outside in their living area. These went pretty quickly, after the squad captains chose floors. Fourth ended up second floor from the top, mainly because I liked the trees which flanked the balconies up there. Kaoren and I have just the one room, since we’re now officially cohabiting.

Like on Tare, a good deal of the furniture – kitchen benches, wardrobes, the baths and showers – is formed directly out of the whitestone, and just need doors and things added. The beds are indents in the whitestone walls – huge nooks – and the mattresses are nanotech responsive ones which try to mould themselves around you. Building the beds into the walls apparently makes it easier to accommodate additional shielding, on top of that already on the living areas.

I’m propped up in the corner of mine, waiting for Kaoren to come back from all the captains being summoned to a meeting by the bluesuit in charge of Muina, Tsaile Staben. I think I was introduced to Tsaile Staben when Pandora was first established, but I can’t for the life of me remember anything about her, and I’m too lazy to go searching through my log. It must be quite something to be put in charge of an entire planet.

The meeting is about what the Setari will be deployed to do over the next few months, and I was surprised to hear that a lot of that will involve settlement work rather than exploration. There’s a huge demand for the Setari here, even with the standing about guarding duties mostly being performed by greensuits now. Tsaile Staben isn’t shy about using them for anything which will make the job quicker or easier. I know Kaoren wants First and Fourth to go hunting Pillars, but it sounds like the Setari are mostly going to be working in real-space.

Research-wise, KOTIS is gradually making progress, though very slowly because the paper records found in Kalasa are so incredibly fragile, and turning a page without destroying it is a real challenge. Zan told me that Twelfth has been spending a lot of time going room to room locating anything and everything that looks like writing and doing all these complicated preservation procedures to try and stop the documents from crumbling on sight (or breath, usually). Still no handily-complete explanation of how the Pillars were built or the best way to get rid of them, just tangential mentions.

But tons of books about being psychic. Telekinesis 101. Reading Minds for Dummies. The Psychic’s Guide to Finding Your Inner Self.

The Lantarens seem to have had a very spiritual approach to their powers, and as Kalasa was a teaching city for the talented most of the books there seem to relate to philosophy and techniques for psychics. Kaoren is understandably fascinated by this, and has been devouring the translations which have yet to be released even to KOTIS on Tare. The translations I’ve read have all sounded a bit Zen, and it looks to me rather as if the psychic is supposedly drawing power from nature, not simply generating it themselves. Embraced by Muina. That’s totally not how the Tarens approach their talents.

There’s more than two thousand people living on Muina now, a number which does my head in. And they’re planning a big expansion as soon as they’ve finished some of the larger infrastructure projects around Pandora, like the major recycling and waste facilities going up in the hills to the east. Tarens are seriously into recycling and have the nanites to really make it work. I can’t get over the astonishing pace of it all.

The Setari squads will likely stay the same for a month or so. Twelfth is one floor up and First one floor below. I can pretty much tell where everyone in the building is now, if I push myself, despite all the shielding.

Before their meeting, Kaoren and Maze double-teamed me for a Serious Discussion (having both of them tell me was deliberate to push home that they were really serious) about my security arrangements. Given that I’m now being guarded from random monsters, random people, Cruzatch, Kolarens and the Nurans, there’s not a lot of scope for me wandering around freely. Kaoren’s my main security detail, of course, but there will be two other Setari assigned as backup at all times. When Kaoren’s not with me, and I’m not in the Setari building, they’ll go into full babysitter mode. In the Setari building, though, they’ll simply be available nearby rather than sitting on top of me, so long as I have no hesitation using my alert.

The challenge with that, of course, is the Kolarens, who I don’t officially need protection from. Being engaged to a Taren does make it unlikely that the Kolarens will think they can buy me, and Maze doesn’t think it very probable that they’d try and force me to work for them, but of course we can’t be absolutely sure. At least the Ionoth situation on Kolar seems to have improved, and the Ddura means that the Cruzatch and the Nurans aren’t a threat so long as I’m in Pandora. But they’d rather be safe than sorry, so I have to make sure I have a Taren with me, or stay in my room.

Pandora’s day ends later than the sleep cycle I was on, so it’s not even sunset and I’m already beyond tired, but no sign of Kaoren. I haven’t actually been asleep when he’s not there since we got together, and I’m starting to get all fretty about it – and annoyed at myself for needing him there to be comfortable going to sleep. I think I’ll go bug someone rather than get all worked up.

Saturday, July 26

Southern Expedition

Long day today, but a good one, and I feel far more settled than I ended up yesterday, when the evening turned into a severe downer. I hadn’t wanted to bug anyone from First and Fourth, since I knew they’d be as tired as me, so went down to the main common room and was chatting with Dess Charn from Twelfth and Pen Alaz from Fourteenth when I fell asleep and had my first projective dream for ages.

The problem is I’m aware of people around me when I’m asleep, so falling asleep while talking to people meant I wasn’t immediately aware that I was asleep. And I dreamed that I was in the common room talking to Dess and Pen when Dess' Combat Sight alerted her to a threat, and Pen stared upward.

Strands of black were descending through the whitestone ceiling, growing longer and longer while Pen stared up at them, and it was only when the forehead emerged that it was clear that it was hair. Then the face came through, a woman, upside-down. Eyes closed, she looked calm, beautiful, but then she opened them, black pits, and smirked.

I think it was from a scary movie I saw once. Or manga. I half-recognised the scene anyway, and that made me realise I was dreaming, and I woke myself up. And Dess and Pen were both on their feet, combat-ready and staring at the exact spot on the ceiling, and then everyone nearby with Combat Sight swarmed to the room, and even though I explained, they still immediately informed their captains. Unlike the Cruzatch, this projection was completely visible in real-space, and registered very strongly as a threat, and I really hate the amount of fuss I can cause just by falling asleep.

Plus I felt that everyone was looking at me differently, some understanding for the first time what a problem I might be.

Maze and Kaoren both spoke to me to make sure I was okay, and Zee took me back to her room until Kaoren returned. I put a good face on it all, apologising and being wry and annoyed with myself, which Zee didn’t challenge, opting instead to give me a shoulder rub for the short time until the strategy meeting finished. Kaoren took very much the same approach, distracting me with a hot shower and then stroking my back after we curled up together.

I understand more and more why Kaoren would avoid a committed relationship with anyone, let alone an enhancement talent. When he’s holding me he can’t completely block what I’m feeling, but he wanted to comfort me, so last night became a demonstration of the price he’s going to pay for being with me. It didn’t help that I kept trying to force myself to not be upset because I knew it was keeping him awake, and failing only made me more upset.

I felt like it was my fault for letting my guard down, and I hate having to be on guard about something as straightforward as sleeping. And I hate being the cause of fusses, and especially making Kaoren feel he can’t go anywhere without me immediately having a drama. But, most importantly, it meant the bluesuits would think I hadn’t gained enough control, and make them more doubtful about using me in missions.

After way too long of neither of us getting any sleep Kaoren gave up, obviously deciding it was better to talk it out with me: "You’re upset because you didn’t immediately recognise it as a dream?"

"Thought I was past this," I said, trying not to sound whiny and failing. "All this training, all the time everyone’s spent helping me avoid this, and I had half the building running the first time I stopped paying attention."

He raised the lights a little, enough to see my expression, then touched my cheek. "Cassandra, I have been trained to prevent my nightmares since I was fifteen. Yet I still have them."

"That’s–"

"Different?" He leaned forward to kiss my forehead. "I don’t see how. While your nightmares have the potential to do considerably more damage, they are a product of talents you are still discovering." He paused, then added: "You’re now capable of waking at will, so the issue is those times you don’t recognise that you’re dreaming. The simplest solution would be to attempt to wake yourself whenever there is an attack, or unusual phenomena. To assume, at least momentarily, that anything could be one of your projections."

I liked that idea, and he could tell, and smiled[5]. Then he took me through a visualisation exercise, which was effective in sending me off to sleep once I stopped feeling guilty at the touch of croakiness in his voice which underlined how much he needed to sleep.

Kaoren and I talked it over when we woke this morning, while we were waiting for it to be dawn. Whether it would be better to have separate beds, or for one of us to sleep on the couch sometimes. Neither of us are keen on that option, but given how dangerous it is for him to be tired, we’re going to have to consider it. That discussion somehow segued into whether he would change his name to mine, or I would change my name to his, given the conflicting customs of our planets. We’re probably just going to leave our names alone. And we talked about children, and how we aren’t opposed to the idea, but aren’t in a hurry to have them, especially not while we’re so very much under the control of KOTIS – and not when I’m potentially facing situations like enhancing large groups during massive attacks, where my system gets so stressed out.

I’m really engaged to be married. It feels very odd to have discussions about when to have children, and to watch Kaoren’s reaction. He said he finds the idea "interesting in theory".

Today’s assignment was exploration and greysuit escort duty, and while the expeditioners were assembling I had the opportunity to drop in to see Isten Notra and say hi to Shon. Isten Notra’s looking very well, eyes sparkling and full of life. And whether or not she really had thought about setting me up with Shon, she seemed genuinely pleased for me and Kaoren – and said one or two things to him that I couldn’t hear which made him develop a faintly wry expression.

Islen Dola and Islen Nakano (the greysuits in charge of flora and fauna research) were leading a joint expedition to Mesiath, which is the platform city in the southern hemisphere tall forest. Mesiath is the old Muinan name for it – one of the discoveries made at Kalasa was a number of maps, and all the correct place names have been adopted. The old town at Pandora has been renamed Aversan, and the lake is Tai Medlar (tai is old Muinan for lake).

It was primarily a sampling expedition – seeking out plants and animals and bringing them back for cataloguing, tests, maybe even cultivation. They don’t bring back lots of animals – they capture them, take images and tissue samples, then let them go, unless they think it’s a really interesting specimen. A huge number of people were going – about a hundred – most of them belonging to flora and fauna, but also greensuits, a small group of archaeologists, device technicians, geology, survey. Mesiath has been designated a primary site, which means they’re likely to establish a settlement there, partly because it’s on the opposite seasonal cycle to Pandora, but mainly because it has a platform, but isn’t a pattern-roof village.

My job was a mild variation of poke Devlin at it: I was simply to let the Setari know if I saw or felt anything unusual. And enhance if necessary.

I gave Islen Dola and Islen Nakano the couple of minutes of the Planet Earth documentary which I’d recorded during my last testing session since I’d worked out how to subtitle it. The consequence of this being that I spent half an hour being minutely cross-examined about mass migration, something which a non-seasonal planet doesn’t really see – at least not in the numbers shown in the documentary. Of course, they want the entire documentary now, which I’m quite happy to do, except being something like thirteen hours long it’s going to take me an age to reproduce it.

I guess this makes me the psychic space pirate? No-one tell the BBC’s copyright department.

Today was by no means a particularly dangerous expedition. It was overcast, and drizzled briefly at one point, but it was a gorgeous forest and full of birdsong and little scampering animals. Because there was a platform, the area was clear of Ionoth, and since the Ddura was one which is used to Muinans, it even shut up pretty quick. There were still native Muinan animals which might be a danger, particularly poisonous bugs, but otherwise it was a nice outing. I stayed with Fourth, who were helping the archaeologists hunt out significant locations. It was a very spread-out city, with little which was undamaged. The trees had had centuries to work on the whitestone – we were lucky the platform was intact.

First Squad was working with survey and geology – soaring up for aerial views. Every so often the fauna group would get a Setari to come capture an animal for them – Telekinesis and Levitation make that ridiculously easy. A complete lack of drama day, and since Mesiath is in a time zone a couple of hours behind Pandora, when we headed back in late afternoon we arrived just as sunset was fading.

The structure of the new Setari building really makes for a very social set-up, especially when everyone gets back from missions at roughly the same time and sits around the big common room to chat and eat and watch the lake. I belatedly gave Zan the bit of music I’d recorded for her, and quite a few of us watched the latest documentary about the Muina settlement (latest as delivered that afternoon by the several ships which are basically on daily shuttle duty between the Muina, Tare and Kolar).

I think I might avoid the news for a while again. My engagement is still all screaming headlines, and there was some annoying talk about undue influence and whether Kaoren was really who I would have chosen if I wasn’t kept on such a tight leash by KOTIS. And some irritating expert saying getting engaged was a symptom of my isolation and loss, and that I’d no doubt fixated on Kaoren as a saviour. That was rather balanced by a lot of people thinking it terribly romantic, and there’s an increasing number of Kaoren Ruuel lust-sites. I learned a good deal more about the Ruuel family, and saw pictures of his parents and brother.

There was also a lot of discussion about what I could do, and what I should be allowed to do. The Kalasa projection was interesting to a lot more people than historians, and plenty of people were pointing out my potential as an industrial spy.

Devlin. Cassandra Devlin. Shaken, not stirred.

Kaoren fell asleep while I was reading him my diary, thanks to all the exploring after a not particularly good night with me. I’ve got to figure out a way to not work myself up over things.

Sunday, July 27

Nature documentary

Another day in the forest. Gloriously sunny – which in a forest that tall means incredible columns of light beaming down. Mesiath is a very peaceful place. There’s apparently some cat-type predators busily hiding from us, but nothing else anyone’s spotted which might think of actively hunting humans.

The city edges on a lake (it’s pretty hard to find a city which doesn’t edge on a lake on this planet), and I stayed with First and Twelfth Squad today while they did a little landscaping in preparation for seeding a settlement, since even with Zan’s level of Telekinesis, enhancement really helped deal with trees that tall. Meanwhile Fourth hunted down gates and explored in near-space.

It was not at all what I’d been picturing that we’d be doing, but managed to combine practical work with a balm of wonder. Everyone was enjoying themselves, glad to be away from the snow, and to see more of their home planet, and Alay disturbed this cluster of butterflies (rather like Monarchs, but with more red and gold) which spiralled up around her into one of the columns of light and she stood in the centre of them, lips parted and eyes bright. I felt like I’d never seen her happy before, and the Unara crack felt like centuries ago, lost to sunlight and iridescent wings.

And then the butterflies settled down over everyone and that was a different kind of fun. Tarens and bugs don’t mix, and it was hard not to laugh at the greysuits ducking and scattering.

On a less entertaining note, much of what we were doing was being recorded for another documentary, part of the increased openness demanded. I avoided the scanners as much as possible, especially when anywhere near Kaoren. I don’t know if documentaries will lower the number of people sneakily capturing images of us, though.

Monday, July 28

Prescribed privilege

I met two other strays today, people from a planet called Solaria. Despite the name, Solaria’s apparently an icy world, snowy everywhere except at the equator, and the two Solarians – who’ve both been on Tare for over twenty years – had been brought in to give advice and feedback on cold climate living. Very sensible of the Tarens, since my dim memories of a skiing holiday really haven’t been very useful.

Solaria’s another planet without a marked seasonal tilt. Can seasons really be that unusual among habitable planets? The Solarians were called Denasan (a really wrinkled, white-haired man) and Purda (a woman in her thirties). I spent quite a while chatting to them, learning about their planet, which was in the throes of industrialisation when they were displaced, and asking about their experiences after turning up on Tare. The technological differences were of course the biggest adjustment –more so for Denasan than for Purda, since Purda was only fourteen at the time. Interestingly, the Solarians' Muinan origin has been overtaken by a creation myth involving an ice-god. Stories of Muina are still told, but Homeworlders are persecuted by the priesthood of the ice god, and a lot of Solarians don’t believe Muina exists.

Denasan really misses his home planet, and loves being on Muina because it reminds him of the region south of his home on Solaria (at least currently, while Pandora’s still having buckets of snow dumped on it – Spring never comes on Solaria), and he’s really struggled with living on Tare and pretty much hates it, so far as I could tell. Purda’s much more typical Taren and adjusted. She worked on the Solarian version of a farm and even though she was only a teenager when she found herself on Tare, she remembers a whole heap of agricultural information the technicians seem to be interested in.

Although Earth is a good deal closer to Tare technologically, it was pretty clear that without being a touchstone I would have faced a lot of the same issues the Solarians have struggled with, trying to make a normal life as a stray on Tare. The average Taren really does think everyone not from Tare (including, quite possibly, Kolarens) is just a bit slow. Adjusting to a different dialect, and all that advanced technology, makes it very hard to get out of Base Level (which is a Taren term for subsistence living via social security).

There’s also a stray network called Tare Displaced Channel which get together for mutual support and complaining about Tarens. Denasan and Purda gave me a formal invite to one of the get-togethers. The Channel apparently has tried to invite me before, and Denasan was rather huffy about it. I explained about me not getting mail from people outside KOTIS, and not being allowed to go out on my own, which I think may have changed Denasan’s attitude toward me a little. To the average stray I must seem hugely pampered.

I hadn’t really thought about the impact of the opening of Muina on other strays. Suddenly skills which were completely irrelevant on Tare are becoming valuable, and Denasan and Purda aren’t the only strays being recruited.

Tuesday, July 29

Urban Design

KOTIS is seriously gearing up settlement preparation. Today we skipped Mesiath and instead all five Setari squads spent the day assisting in the seeding of entire suburbs for Pandora, deep into the hills east of the old city and then along the lake to the north. Five squads of highly-trained killers clearing snow and lugging vats of whitestone seed and computer-constructed models and bits of equipment and chasing off hungry native wildlife.

I was along for enhancement, and learned all these details of urban planning and design which I’d never really thought about. It’s not just a matter of plonking houses and streets down. For the past five months, ever since they worked out that people could survive here, a fleet of technicians back on Tare and Kolar have been designing the city layout in terms of water and power and food production and drainage and waste and hospital services and fires and police and schools and transport and industry and shops and entertainment and defence and – my head just starts reeling when I try and think through the whole process. They’re preparing initial infrastructure for fifty thousand people, and have expansion plans for long into the future. I just can’t get over the idea of fifty thousand people living here.

Before the snows came the survey and geologist types had had a pretty thorough go at mapping the topography of Pandora’s surroundings. They selected sites for factories (an industrial hub inland along a river which lets out north of here) and the residential sections will checkerboard with farmland, which in the very long run will probably become parkland. The bit north where all the sheep live is going to be a particularly farmy area since it also brushes along the northern river – the sheep are being redomesticated and already have their personal set of highly technological shepherds – lots of Kolarens involved there, since Kolar deals with animals far more than Tare does. The old city (Aversan) is going to be part historical site and part working gardens. They don’t want to pull it down or alter it greatly, but it is a biggish chunk of land, so they’re going to use all the gardens either for produce, botanical research, or as a wildlife habitat for animals that they want to study. The plaza/piazza areas will be used as exactly that by the inhabitants of the wider area, and certain selected buildings will be converted to functioning use, particularly around the amphitheatre.

I’m very impressed by their plans. I would never have expected the Tarens, with their closed-off and blockish cities, to switch so immediately to creating a sprawling park with balconies. Given the pictures I’ve seen of Kolar, the Kolarens have definitely been a big influence – because of the heat, Kolarens sink their buildings, and only have parts of them out in the sun. Like the Tarens, Kolarens lived in caves when they first evacuated from Muina, at least in part because water on Kolar either drains underground or evaporates very quickly.

The Setari building is a prototype of what the buildings of this phase will be like, though most of them will be larger, built to accommodate dozens of families. No individual houses at this stage, just half-buried apartment blocks. The Kolarens and the Tarens have had to work together a great deal on this, both to avoid the Kolarens feeling excluded again, and because neither of their planets really fit the Muinan environment.

Back on Tare and Kolar they’re having huge arguments (discussions) about who gets to move in to all these buildings we’ve just planted – they’ve been having them for months, struggling over the big questions raised by two distinct cultures trying to settle the same home world. Is Tare or Kolar in control? Is KOTIS the right group to be leading the settlement? Will there be separate Taren and Kolaren settlements? A unified planetary government? Whose laws will be used? Which dialect? Whose technology? Do they build for complete interface integration, or actually step back in terms of technology? If all settlers have to have the interface, will it be the interface on Tare’s terms?

There are plenty of people on Kolar not keen to have the internal policeman which the Taren interface represents, and they find many of their laws horrifying. Of course, Tarens don’t think much of some of Kolar’s laws either.

Tare is winning a lot of the arguments, though. Nanotechnology is a difficult advance for Kolar to turn down, and it at least sounds like the Tarens are getting rather less anal about sharing their technology now that Muina can offer them the resources they’re currently dependant on Kolar to provide. Part of what they’re deciding will be temporary, just an initial structure so that they can get moving.

I just realised that all this rush and hurry mightn’t be down to population pressures or being so keen to embrace their home world. Tare and Kolar might be thinking of Muina as an ark. Because the Ddura will protect the platform towns even from massives, and a gate in the wrong place on Muina won’t bring a city tumbling down.

At least, not unless the gates get bigger than cities.

If that is the reason, they’re not saying it out loud. All the news stories about Muina are extremely cheerful and upbeat, and so are the KOTIS staff concentrating on getting whitestone seeded and design models placed. Over the next few weeks, with only a bit of monitoring from the technicians (who need to be sure the growing buildings don’t run out of readily-available food), a small city will quietly be reproduced. Lacking all the glass and fittings and furniture and energy generators, but with the bulk of the work done. Whitestone even extrudes certain metals and minerals, rather than absorb them. They don’t even have to dig to lay the connecting pipes. They’re going to grow a subway system.

I definitely chose the right name for the settlement. This isn’t a box I can close. I think all the Setari assisting were overwhelmed as well. Happy, though. Maze, particularly, really loves doing positive things rather than endlessly killing Ionoth, and it showed in everything he did.

Kaoren’s getting his way about returning to our main mission though. Tomorrow First and Fourth will take me into the Ena for a combination of me doing more testing and them trying to find Pillars. The fact that we can settle this world, that the Ddura will protect the sites, hasn’t removed the need to fix the tearing of the spaces, or found the reason why the Ddura started killing Muinans, and what exactly the Cruzatch have to do with it all.

The fact that they’re intending to go ahead with the settlement without answering the question about the Ddura scares the hell out of me.

Wednesday, July 30

Back on Track

Kaoren’s very pleased. First and Fourth took me on the Ena mission he wanted (having stolen Fourteenth’s strongest path finder, Sanya, as well) and they all enhanced and immediately detected a Pillar.

Since they were under strict orders not to take me into combat, but also had the advantage of the immediate near-space and connecting spaces being wiped clear by the Ddura, they could take me along partway, tracking through two gates before they encountered a space which was populated. They then sent me back to wait by the gate with Zee, Halla and Mori as escort, and I got to do tests while the squads pushed on.

A very simple test today – Zee told me to project remembered music or television until I could project no more, and they would measure how much that cost me. I recorded another piece of classical music for Zan (this rather pretty thing done with recorders, slow and spiralling, no idea who it’s by), and then a song for me, and then I did an episode and a half of Planet Earth which I now get to subtitle. I couldn’t do all that in one go – I have to rest every few minutes – but it’s nothing like so difficult a task as doing it in real-space. I stopped when I was totally wiped, and spent much of the afternoon asleep, carefully doing a visualisation exercise before going to bed. Zee stayed in the living room of my apartment, but I managed to not have a nightmare.

When I woke up it was late afternoon, and Kaoren still wasn’t back, but I was determined to stay drama-free and asked Zan and Dess if we could go for a walk along the lake. That wasn’t bad: we chatted about parts of Muina we’ve visited, and then built snow sculptures on the very top of the Setari building/hill until, finally, First and Fourth came back, exhausted but whole.

They’d had to travel ten spaces to get to the Pillar, and had run up against a few tough battles which made them glad they were dual-squadding, especially since the Ena manipulation talents had had to stabilise an awful lot of gates. Par was levitating Sonn, who’d passed out. They sent Squad Three and Fourteenth out to place a couple of drones, and put some extra stabilisation on the gates, and they made it there and back in about an hour and a half. Kaoren and Maze both waited until the other squads were safely back before getting some rest themselves – working their way through dinner and getting a start on their reports. Kaoren pretty much fell into bed once we got back to our room.

I like these bed nooks. The beds themselves are ever so slightly cup-shaped and the nanomaterial mattress makes sleeping on rock a lot more comfortable than you’d expect. Need more pillows, but the walls are great for propping yourself against.

Kaoren gets restless if I’m not in contact with him. I probably shouldn’t be pleased about that. I probably shouldn’t keep experimenting to see how he reacts when I move my leg away.

We’ve only been together two and a bit weeks. It was a shock to flip back through my diary and realise that. I’ve stopped being so wary of doing or saying the wrong thing.

Thursday, July 31

At the movies

All of the Muina-stationed Setari, except for Kiste and Halla who are babysitting me, are back in the Ena today trying to do the tests which had been planned for the last Pillar. The mood was mixed when everyone left: they’ve been wanting to properly study a Pillar for so long, but given what happened last time, no-one was exactly cheerful. And, even though the aether isn’t fatal to them any more, it does make them drunk, which is not a good state to be in any part of the Ena, let alone areas frequented by far too many deep-space roamers. So today’s a serious day.

It’s the Cruzatch which are the biggest concern. It’s all too possible they might try to sabotage the mission again, so the squads plan to use a drone to lock the outlet levers before they venture close to the Pillar themselves.

At least Kiste and Halla are in the exact same boat as me, worrying about their squads. Though interestingly calling each other Tahl and Charan when they think I’m not listening. Kiste’s elbow is almost fully healed now, but he says he’s facing a lot of training to get it back to former strength.

It was a nice day outside, so I decided to see how tolerant they’d be of me wandering about. There’d been a big dump of snow the previous night, but the skies had cleared, and there was no wind. Snow drifts did make it a little hard-going in spots, but I figured this could count as me getting some exercise, and tramped my way all the way in to the old town, up to my old tower, only to find I couldn’t get in. They really have preserved it as a historical site, fitting shields over the windows and doorways.

Annoyed by this, I headed back to Setari quarters and told Kiste and Halla that I was going to spend the rest of the day working on subtitling. So I’m in my bedroom being sore from forging through snowdrifts, and taking a break from translating David Attenborough.

Hm, the Litara just arrived with another massive supplies delivery, and also Third, Eleventh and Thirteenth. More squads here than on Tare at the moment. I guess this is because of the Pillar.

subtitle:[* * *]

Yep, they’re going to have all these squads here for a few days. They don’t quite all fit in the Setari quarters, but along with the supplies were a bunch more mattresses and couches, so people are sharing apartments. The Pillar experiments are going to be performed in shifts because there’s one gate which they aren’t going to be able to hold for more than five days, and they can’t tell when, if ever, it will come back. KOTIS wants to get as much information as possible before they lose the path.

Why the Lantarens couldn’t have stuck these things somewhere easier to get to I don’t know.

The Pillars team returned not long after the Litara showed up, having had to kill a fair number of roamer Ionoth, but not otherwise troubled. No Cruzatch. They’d successfully sent a drone into the Pillar and obtained bunches of useful scans, and positioned it to block the levers from moving. I don’t know if the scans will really tell them anything – ancient Lantaren devices seem to me more on the level of magic than science. They certainly haven’t figured out how the teleporting platforms work.

Still, everyone’s very pleased that there’s been no disasters so far, and the afternoon involved more helpful unpacking and lots of chatting and, since Third is here, great bursts of Eeli excitement. Eeli is totally overjoyed by the new Setari building. A big central socialising area is her idea of heaven, and the sunset over the partially iced lake was glorious enough to brighten the eyes of even the most serious of the Setari.

We had a big group meal, bringing down the new couches out of the apartments to fit the extra people. It was a full-on banquet – the pinksuits are having a great time experimenting with making meals out of some of the plants they’ve been cultivating. And there were a few different meat dishes courtesy of one of the hairy sheep. Slow-cooked mutton. Kolarens are used to meat, but the Tarens had to be careful. Their regular diet includes some seafood, but red meat is an exceptional luxury for them, like a $1000 bottle of champagne. Eeli was horrified when I told her that people from Earth usually eat the baby sheep.

Then Zee insisted I do a screening of Planet Earth with the subtitles so that she could make sense of what she’d seen during the testing session. And the channel she created to watch it kind of snowballed to all the Setari, and then our resident support greysuits and pinksuits, who told their section heads about it, which meant Zee was asked if other people could watch, and then practically everyone in Pandora was. It’s pretty disconcerting to suddenly be throwing a video party for three thousand people.

I should have expected the interest. Earth is not only an alien planet, but it’s also (relatively) similar to Muina, which is the main focus of research for most of the expeditionary force. Since Zee had control of the channel, she shifted it into two groups – people who could text me questions (Setari and a few of the department heads) and people who could watch if they wanted. I tried to ignore all the extras and pretend it was just the people in the room with me.

Eeli was fun to watch, round-eyed and delighted most of the time, though there’s a scene where a wolf hunts down this baby caribou and Eeli was so upset when it caught it. And didn’t much like sharks eating seals, either. The first episode is a really useful one to have done, because its subject is seasonal change, which the expeditionary force is particularly interested in. Fortunately it mostly explains itself. There’s a short mini-documentary at the end of each episode, which I’d included (since I’m basically just recalling the DVD set Mum owns), and even though I’d only gotten halfway through the next episode, Zee played it too because there were a couple of bits she’d particularly wanted to ask me about – namely how freaking huge the mountains on Earth are, what was the burning red stuff (lava) and what was with all the snow knocking down trees (an avalanche).

That caused some excitement, and I was bombarded with questions by the section heads when I ran out of subtitled recording. Earth’s geologic instability is something none of their planets have, which means their mountains are more worn down (if they exist at all). Muina does have mountains, but I don’t think they’re at Everest level, and there’s no sign of flowing lava. I fumbled my way through explanations of continental drift, the Ice Ages and dinosaurs until Isten Notra (although very interested herself) eventually called a close to my inquisition and said that the discussion could be continued at a later date, as could further helpful documentaries.

It was, Kaoren said, a useful demonstration that no matter how much I thought I’d described Earth, it was too large a topic to ever assume a proper understanding. I hadn’t properly explained dinosaurs before, apparently, and the avalanche got them all worried about the settlement at Kalasa. Both the Solarians knew about avalanches too, but hadn’t mentioned it because they were very rare on Solaria (again, a fairly flat world) and nobody had asked exactly the right question.

Kaoren wasn’t absolutely exhausted tonight, only tired. It was nice to have a night when he didn’t pass out.

August

Friday, August 1

Cleared

Another test day for me – I’m scheduled for every second day to avoid overstressing my system. It was only a repetition of the projections we’d already run through on Tare, and then I finished off the rest of the Mountains episode of Planet Earth. Zee wouldn’t let me push myself to exhaustion this time, since the idea is to get a better understanding of my powers, not churn out BBC documentaries. Still needed a long nap afterwards, though. But I’m doing well. Fewer headaches, better control, and it’s just so incredibly much easier to do this in the Ena.

The good news is that I’ve been stable and injury-free long enough that the bluesuits are willing to move on from David Attenborough. My next session will be a controlled attempt to look into Kalasa’s past – visualising a single room.

The Setari have divided into a morning shift and an afternoon shift to perform experiments on the Pillar, examining the inflow of the aether and trying to work out what the Pillar does with it. No sign of Cruzatch still, fortunately, although they were having real issues with deep-space Ionoth, and are debating whether it would be safer to send fewer people in the hopes of attracting less of them. A couple of minor injuries for Eleventh.

Twelfth got to spend the entire day carting stuff about, which is what Zan gets for being the strongest Telekinetic. They’ve seriously stepped the construction and deliveries up a notch, and there are now four ships (the Litara, the Diodel, the Wharra and the Luim) devoted to daily ferrying of equipment. Kolar and Tare didn’t have a bunch of spare interplanetary ships lying about, and couldn’t simply abandon all the trade currently established, so it’s taken a little time to get up to four ships devoted to Muina, and they’re fast-tracking construction of more. I still love watching them land, though apparently they intend to construct some kind of airbase well inland past the industrial complex. They haven’t quite finished designing that, though I’m not sure how hard it can be to design a big flat plain of whitestone.

This afternoon after he’d recovered somewhat from his session in the Ena Kaoren and I watched the latest episode of The Hidden War, which was me being idiotic during Maze Rotation and patting Ghost. The episode continues to build the idea of Faer developing some feelings for me, but otherwise is generally accurate in terms of me looking and feeling bad.

Saturday, August 2

End of Winter?

Ouch – combat training with Third this morning. And also a bit of friction between Squad Three and Eleventh Squad. I don’t know the exact cause of it, just noticed the atmosphere. Since Eleventh is injured, they’re not involved with the Pillars today, while Squad Three is on the afternoon shift. Endaran took the non-injured members of her squad out on a training run (it would be a training flounder, given the snow, but they’ve a strong Telekinetic and she had him to clear a path to the paths already cleared by machinery and they jogged around the settlement) until they were totally ragged and far too tired to even care that Squad Three existed.

I think it might be warming up. The snow’s looking a bit slushy.

Kaoren’s been having his post-Ena nap and now that I’ve finished my day’s subtitling (carefully just making the damn episode available over the interface rather than having a video party), I’m going to wake him up and ravish him.

Monday, August 4

Looking in the wrong place

I was a little keyed up for my visualisation exercise yesterday. Wanting to prove myself, I guess, but trying not to show it. Eeli, part of my guard escort, was a useful distraction, and I could see Sefen of Third and Wen of Eleventh suppressing a couple of smiles in her direction. She always lifts the mood, as excited about watching my projection as she has been going to study the Pillar.

My projection tests have all been held just a little way inside the gate to near-space (not too close or my projection might react with the gate) and Zee brings both a drone to record, and a sense-chair for me to lie on. I settle in and then Zee reads out a description of what she wants me to project.

Yesterday it was a room in Kalasa, a small square with no windows and a single door, where the floor had cracked and dropped in the centre, and all the furniture had tumbled and jammed into it. Everything was smirched with grot and tarnish and mould, the way most of the uncleared rooms in Kalasa are, but this one was extra-damaged thanks to water leaking through the equally cracked ceiling, leaving a total rotten mess. The most obvious shape was a big, formerly solid desk, and I could make out a couple of chairs, a brazier, ornaments. Lots of books, or at least the remnants of their covers.

The projection was no more difficult than any other I’ve been doing in the Ena, and after Sefen and Wen confirmed I was projecting a single building rather than the whole of the Kalasa Valley, Zee said:

"We’re starting with this room because the Place Sight talents marked it as important and worth investigating. Now that we’ve confirmed the energy cost of projecting it, we’ll try to reconstruct it as it was before the Breaking."

"How?" I asked. I hadn’t made any effort to look into the past last time, and had been asleep, which is when weirder stuff always seems to happen to me.

"I’m going to redescribe the room as we believe it looked before it was destroyed. It’s very important that you try to confine the visualisation to this room, or at least this building."

I shrugged, willing to give it a shot, but not entirely convinced it would work. It seemed more likely that what I’d produce was a fiction of the past, since they were making up the details.

Zee began describing the room again, and I closed my eyes and tried to picture what she was talking about, although the image of what I knew the room looked like now kept creeping in and it was a long time before I got any result at all. Zee ran out of her pre-prepared script, but just started again and on the repetition I managed to focus and could properly see what the room looked like, and felt the extra energy cost kick in. Not too bad, but it was obviously taking more out of me than the current-time projection.

When I opened my eyes the room was crisply real, with bonus people. A guy in robes just in the act of spreading out this big piece of paper and weighting each corner. He was looking very worried, and having a discussion I couldn’t make sense of with another robed guy. The most I could figure out of the Old Muinan was something had gone wrong, and things were unbalanced. The language experts have provided a translation, though, and it seems he was talking about the tearing of the gates into real-space and the incursion of Ionoth and how it didn’t make sense and that there had to be some extra factor they hadn’t calculated for, something which was pulling everything out of alignment.

Zee stayed by me, keeping an eye on my vitals, but gestured my escort guard forward to get a better view of the piece of paper. Eeli and Sefen were both practically leaning over the table to get a full look at it, and the two Lantarens were kind of noticing their shadows and being startled.

I was already starting to tire, and when Sefen and Wen picked up a couple of the books on the desk and flipped rapidly through them, recording the contents, I noticed another jump in my energy output. The Lantarens looked thoroughly freaked out, but still couldn’t quite properly see us.

And then – it’s really hard to describe, but I felt suddenly like my brain was being pulled out of the back of my head, and it was as if there was a really bright light somewhere nearby – I think the best analogy I could have for it is a neighbouring sun had gone supernova and was turning into a black hole. The two Lantarens – and Sefen – also reacted as if something major was going on. The nearest Lantaren ran to the door and threw it open, yelling something about madness. Zee was yelling too, telling me to stop, shaking me. And then she slapped me.

I did some face and chest clutching then. Face because Zee hadn’t held back – my eye’s still a bit swollen – and chest because it felt like my heart was trying to kick its way out. I gasped and shuddered, convinced I was having a heart attack, and Zee kept telling me to take deep breaths, which reminded me of Kaoren and the last time I’d nearly killed myself. It was pretty close, I gather – my system had gone far beyond its tolerances and I was shaking and dizzy and had a horrendous headache, but Zee had snapped me out of the projection before I’d done any real damage. I’m not allowed to do any strenuous exercise for a few days, just as a precaution, but at last I’ve managed to come through one of my dramas without any major injury.

It wasn’t till Zee was ready to move me that I noticed that Wen, Sefen and Eeli were all clutching books. I’d made them tangible, though not nearly as well as the origami cranes, since they started fading even before we were back to the gate, and there was a pause while the three Setari madly skimmed through them, capturing visuals of the pages to be translated later. Two of the books weren’t related (one was a book of poetry), but the one Sefen had picked up was the latest volume in a meticulous set of observations regarding the activation of the Pillars.

The greysuits are most excited about the piece of paper, though, since it was some kind of hugely complex metaphysical map of the placement of the Pillars. I don’t even begin to understand what they’re talking about when they start foaming over it – it sounds as comprehendible as the Fifth and Sixth Dimension to me (perhaps quite literally?). This and the journal have produced some ecstatic reactions.

When we went through the gate (Wen was levitating me) absolutely everything in real-space was blurry, which produced the usual needle-to-the-brain sensation. I spent a while barely able to pay attention to anything until my first dose of painkiller, which is when I realised that the settlement had been in an extreme flap when we returned. Zee was staying with me, and told me sternly to calm down when I realised that she’d sent the second shift of Setari to check on those at the Pillar. But she let me clutch her hand until everyone had returned safely.

I’d started projecting the event which wiped out the majority of Muina’s Lantarens. And when that happened, every platform in real-space reacted with a huge power surge, as did the Pillar. I hadn’t killed anyone, thankfully, or caused the Ddura to stop recognising people as Muinan, and very interestingly the drones stationed with the two malachite marbles detected a power surge from them as well, suggesting that they’re somehow linked. I’d given the settlement a big scare, though, for all that the greysuits are overjoyed at the information recorded from the projection. Even the power surge is considered overall a good thing, because it’s a clue to what happened, and they got lots of interesting readings from it.

Kaoren was very quiet when he got back, and though I had my eyes shielded at the time, I could hear the way he was being remote and super-polite to people when he did talk at all. Zee apologised to us both for not seeing the implications of the test, which I found embarrassing, and I wish I’d thought it through more myself, because it seems obvious in retrospect that the room as it appeared just before the disaster wasn’t a very safe thing to try and project. It took me a while to work out that Kaoren was angry at himself, and when I finally talked everyone into letting me rest in my own room and got a chance to ask him why, he said it was because he hadn’t read more than the outline of my test, that he’d let himself be distracted by the investigation of the Pillar.

It didn’t help at all that for the rest of the day I couldn’t open my eyes without seeing a completely blurry world and getting insta-crushed by the headache from hell. I completely refused to let them hold open my eyelids and shine lights at my pupils after the first bout, thank you very much. Maze told them to tape shut and bind my eyes, and to hold off further examination till today and fortunately this morning they were back to normal, with just very occasionally the faintest quiver out of the corners of my eyes.

Kaoren had Fourth shifted to babysitting duty for the day, and is making me sit somewhere he can see me while he trains his squad mercilessly into the ground – combat training where he actually fights each of them. He’s not beating them up or anything, but he’s forcing them to look deeply at any of their combat weaknesses and really strain to correct them. He’s trying to regain his focus. He had nightmares all last night, and kissed me madly when I woke up this morning and could see properly again. And then went and had a cold shower, heh.

I shouldn’t laugh. Worrying about me could get him killed.

Tuesday, August 5

Sturdily fragile

This will be the final day of Pillar investigation. One of the gates won’t last beyond tomorrow. I spent much of the morning over at the sciences building, answering questions about cheese-making and tidal waves (and sealing wax and string?) and then I had lunch with Isten Notra and Shon (and Sefen and Chise from Third). Isten Notra tried to explain what she thought the Pillars were doing, which took a bit of work since the terms she was using kept going into the does not compute box. But eventually I sort of got where she was coming from. Because they’re called Pillars, and look like towers, I’d been thinking of them as columns propping up the roof of deep-space. But they’re more like segments of a single long needle piercing a series of folds in the Ena. Not an artificial wormhole. The Pillars stop deep-space from moving about completely freely.

So it’s not so much that the Pillars are holding deep-space open, as that they’re holding it in a certain alignment. Deep-space itself sounds terribly complicated: a space shaped like a huge drifting fishing net of teleporting portals. The Pillars make it relatively easy to cross because although there’s still a lot of shift further away, in the more central areas around the Pillars everything wobbles only slightly. It’s funny: I’ve been picturing the crossing of the rift as involving a short, straight flight, but really the crew of the Litara and Diodel have been following this precise and complicated course around all these reefs of gates. And figuring out what’s through the gates involves going through them. Wormhole lucky dip. No wonder they have little real hope of finding Earth, especially since it’s away from this central line and thus everything moves and shifts about, just as the spaces do.

The main thing Isten Notra wanted to talk to me about, though, was precisely what I’d felt when I’d recreated the disaster. She showed me an interesting simulation – a map of Kalasa, and the location of the room which I’d been visualising. Then she included the scan of the testing session, aligning my test chair up exactly on the map. I hadn’t even realised that when the test had gone bad I’d started staring off to my right, back and forth between the people in the room and one of the walls.

"That’s the direction that it was coming from, yes?" Isten Notra said. "The heaviness?"

"Ye-es," I said, rather doubtfully. "I think too big to have a real direction, like asking what direction the sky is. There was–" I paused, struggling to pull together any kind of proper impression, because nothing really quite fit what I was trying to say. "Is like that’s the nearest part. Like a massive was walking over the top of me, and that was the closest leg."

Isten Notra did something to the simulation, drawing a line in the direction I was looking, and then moving back to a city-wide aerial view as it continued to extend. It crossed one side of Kalasa’s circle, and a little down, and landed squarely on the barricaded building with Kalasa’s malachite marble.

"Green balls were what was pulling Pillars out of balance? Is what happened next planned, do you think, Isten Notra? Everyone dying and the Ddura not recognising anyone? Or did it all go wrong for whoever built those things as well?"

"Major questions. Particularly regarding the Ddura. One thing we have not yet been able to test is whether the Ddura properly treat Cruzatch as Ionoth. Although their conspicuous absence from any Ddura-guarded settlements suggests an answer."

The rest of the day I’ve been with Kaoren – we went for a short walk, and then have been curled up in our room being overly mindful of the fact that I’m supposed to avoid strenuous exercise. We talked a lot about the Pillars and what Isten Notra had shown me, and what the Cruzatch might or might not be – and about deep-space physics, which he understands far better than I do. He’s recovered fairly well from my latest near-death experience, but made me promise to be more cautious.

I read a great deal of my diary to him, and we’re almost up to the point where I get rescued. It wasn’t at all fun reading about my adventures in kissing-guys-while-drunk, but Kaoren was more interested in whether I missed being able to drink. He’s never been drunk – and I suspect would find being at all not in control of himself horrifying – but he wanted to know if I resented the restriction. The aether tests put me off even the thought of drinking for a while, but I don’t really like KOTIS being able to say I’m not allowed to drink.

I miss chocolate FAR more.

Most of the teams are being sent back to Tare tomorrow afternoon, after being suitably worked into the ground helping with the settlement again.

Wednesday, August 6

On the Menu

The first of today’s ships – a Kolaren delivery – arrived while a group of us were sitting around the big flat steps outside the common room enjoying a patio breakfast and the increasingly warm temperatures. Lohn, who always keeps up with the news as the ships come in, said: "So that’s why they’re rushing getting these buildings done."

The Kolaren news feed was full of the prospective end of the months-long negotiations over the resettlement agreement, the complete detail of which would be made public at the official signing ceremony to be held in two weeks – at Pandora. Something which seems to involve everyone really important from two planets coming here for a big stickybeak. And lots of press.

Maze did some private communing with those in charge, then said: "The Council of Tare and the Rukmor. The Ormon of Nent, and the three Southern Ancipars. And their entourage and guests, estimated to be some two thousand people in all. A thousand various other dignitaries and a mere five hundred or so press. Arriving over two days, then the formalities and a grand celebration."

"Quite the timetable," Taarel said. "Do we take the role of guard or guest?"

"Tourist attraction," Lohn said, and grinned at me. "Hope you packed a pretty outfit. I’d wager you’re listed as the main course."

"I’m going to be sick that week," I said firmly. They thought I was kidding. Well, Kaoren didn’t, but I think he’s waiting to see whether I get used to the idea.

The Council of Tare is the mayor (and some sub-mayors) of every major island. The Rukmor is kind of like the designated heads of a bunch of scholastic fields (Dean of Sport, Dean of Performance Art, Dean of Physical Sciences, except planet-wide). Together the Council and the Rukmor have a weighted voting system to make planetary decisions. The Ormon of Nent is the king of Kolar’s north pole country, and the Southern Ancipars are the three elected leaders of Kolar’s south pole country, which was only established after the Tarens showed up and raised Kolar’s technological level enough so that they could travel past their burnt-toast equator.

Much unpacking of ships and hauling of cargo followed. KOTIS does have machinery which can do all this, but it’s hard to beat the speed, versatility and flexibility of Telekinetics and Levitation talents – and everyone else treated hauling the small stuff about as weights training. The expansion is roaring along. It’s quite something to look out over the growing streets of the settlement, and see balconies emerging in an eerie accompaniment to the fleshy green plants Eeli found poking through the snow (daffodils maybe?). The earliest buildings seeded will be ready for fitting-out by tomorrow.

The ships took away the extra squads, though Twelfth Squad’s assignment here has been extended purely because Zan’s strength is unmatched and she’s considered too useful for the construction effort. I asked her if she minded, but she pointed out that it’s giving her squad the opportunity to be involved in things like the Pillar missions. And she really loves it here. She hasn’t exactly grown all chatty, but she seems far less separate and closed off and set apart than when I first knew her.

So, First, Third, Fourth, Eleventh and Twelfth now, as well as Squad Three.

Thursday, August 7

Forest rest

Back to Mesiath today, joining the exploration and sampling there. Just with Third and Fourth, while the other squads continue to assist with construction.

Friday, August 8

Part of it all

Breakfast is becoming the big group chat time – most evenings the squads are a bit too worn out to want to hang around chatting. The hot topic of discussion the past couple of days has been the translations of Lantaren teaching material. Everything they’ve found goes on about the connection with Muina, becoming one with Muina, feeling the world as a primary necessary first step to strengthening your talents.

This is completely not how the Setari learn how to use their powers. Their strength is something they develop in themselves. They’ve been having endless debates about whether the idea of feeling the world is simply a philosophy, or truly has an impact. I’m pretty sure every single one of them has had a shot at trying to establish some kind of connection, just to see. I know the idea is taking up an increasing amount of Kaoren’s spare thoughts – it’s hitting him both in his perfectionism and his Sights' drive to understand.

This morning Maze wanted to know whether I felt any connection with my surroundings when I was visualising or projecting, but I’m really not aware of anything like that and said so.

"It could explain the large variance in results, though," Zan said. She was sitting cross-legged on one of the individual chairs, looking incredibly petite as she tucked into one of the huge breakfasts Setari need to fuel themselves when they’re expected to haul containers half the day. "Especially the effects you’ve achieved in sleep. If in sleep you are achieving a greater connection to – well, not the planet, but to the Ena or the universe or however one wants to term it – that would explain your sometimes disproportionate achievements. Particularly travelling back to your own world’s near-space."

"That one I think I know how I did," I said, and wrinkled my nose at the way everyone around me went still for a moment, then tried to hide any reaction. I know that KOTIS doesn’t truly want to find a way for me to go back to Earth, not in the near future. And the Setari really, really don’t want to be in the position of being my jailers.

Kaoren was sitting next to me, and he’d reacted the same way, because I hadn’t discussed this with him, but then he relaxed. He knows damn well what certain means. "How?"

"I think I must have made an Ionoth," I said, turning to look at him. "If it was possible for me to fly, I’d be flying by now because that would be so cool, and believe me I’ve tried. I know I can’t do that. So something which can fly must have carried me."

"That makes sense," Kaoren said. "Do you remember dreaming of being carried?"

"No. Don’t remember dreaming at all. But isn’t the Ena the source of psychic powers? When I first got to Tare, I was sure I was told that all strays have a strong connection to Ena, and that’s why end up getting displaced."

"Ena manipulation or Gate sight, perhaps," Taarel said. She was perched on one arm of the sofa Eeli was using, looking regal as usual. "Those are very common talents for the displaced to exhibit. But there’s no established link between, say, elementals and the Ena."

They had a long discussion on whether they really could be channelling some form of external power rather than producing it themselves, and just not be aware of it. I talked it over with Kaoren much later, when we were taking a lunch break at Mesiath. It’s really frustrating him, to simply not be sure, to feel he’s missing something.

Mesiath’s such a gorgeous place, just starting to edge into Autumn as Pandora lets go of Winter. We were sitting on some shattered whitestone which had fallen into the lake, paddling bare feet into the cool water. Most of the trees are pine, but there are a lot of the broader-leaf trees which are just starting to think about changing colour – much taller, grander ones than those at Pandora. Masses of birds and animals, and the lake incredibly deep, cold even in Summer.

"That’s what you’re doing freezing out on the balcony at dawn, right? Trying to channel your talents through a connection to Muina?" I only knew he was doing this because he comes back inside, chilled through and all wound up, and makes himself feel better by carrying me off into the shower. Which at least means we both feel happily relaxed when we go down to breakfast.

"It may be something the younger Kalrani can learn, even if we cannot," Kaoren said, philosophically. "I am only fracturing myself, trying to take a different approach to using my talents."

"Pandora isn’t the right place to try and be all connected anyway," I said, leaning against him. "Since the temperature makes you want to lock yourself inside, to put on lots of layers of clothes. Plus, first step supposedly is to be connected, not to do anything with powers. We should just go skinny-dipping here, enjoy the world."

I had to explain what skinny-dipping is – definitely not a word Tarens have – and was surprised when Kaoren nodded and acted like I’d made a good suggestion.

"Perhaps not entirely without clothing, but you make a good point. I’ll talk to Surion about scheduling."

That made me laugh at him, that he would schedule skinny-dipping, and he surprised me again by kissing me. We were in a relatively sheltered spot, but not completely out of sight, and Kaoren is so not into public displays of affection. I think it’s a sign of how stymied he feels by the Lantaren teaching tracts.

Maze thinks swimming at Mesiath a reasonable idea as well – whether to attempt some sort of connection, as training, or simply for a fun break. He’s said anyone who wants to can take a lunchtime swimming break there during the next week, but of course set a bunch of safety rules about not going off alone and not going too far from the main expeditionary force.

I think all the squads are planning to go tomorrow.

The part of my diary I read to Kaoren today was about what Cassandra means. I could tell he thought that she who entangles men was very funny, but he focused more on the prophecy stuff, of course. He said Symbol Sight hadn’t shown him any precise significance to my name, and we turned over how my strange Sight seems to let me see everything except the future. And then whether I should try and see the future, which I said I’d probably refuse to try to do. Mainly because I just don’t want to be able to do that, but it does also seem to be a far more dangerous thing to do, since I might end up seeing bunches of possible futures.

He asked if it would bother me if he reported the meaning, and I said "Yes," and I think he’s going to leave it at that. I’m glad he asked.

Saturday, August 9

Quadrangles

I am increasingly convinced that it’s a requirement to be in love with Maze if you’re a female Setari captain. All the squads went to Mesiath today, and had a very good time away from the main expeditionary force. Zan came, but didn’t swim, and fell asleep tucked against a rock on the bank and Maze found her still asleep and carried her back. She looked really tiny and young against his chest (and I got the impression that her squad wanted to rescue her).

Endaran, the captain of Eleventh, went really thin about the mouth and got ominously quiet. Taarel handled it better, just saying, "She’s being overworked," to Maze, and nodding when he said he’d rearrange Twelfth’s scheduling. But later on, after only Third and Fourth were left to continue assisting the sampling expedition, I saw for a moment that she looked very alone. Whether Zan woke up before Maze put her to bed, or if anyone told her, I don’t know. Maze was looking pretty damn tired at dinner tonight as well.

I’m feeling very lucky to be me today. We had a really gorgeous day. Long walks in the forest, with just a bit of side-fuss due to the swarms of greysuits which need herding. Then swimming before lunch – very easy to get rid of the arms and feet of the nanosuits and set the cloth to a thinner, finer texture. After some initial noise and splashing, we spread out in a side-branch of the lake where we’d found all these drowned and shattered whitestone buildings mostly submerged, and everyone either sunned themselves on sticking-out bits of stone or floated on their backs in the water.

The day was very warm, and floating on my back in cold water with my eyes half-closed looking at the beams of sunlight was really the best way I could imagine spending my time. I have to admit I wasn’t really trying to do any of this connecting with the world thing, just enjoying myself and trying not to distract Kaoren. Place Sight and Sight Sight make this complicated for him, but he was very thoughtful about it afterwards and said at dinner that he felt that it was a valuable exercise and one worth continuing. All the captains seem to be in agreement about that, whether because they think it a good thing for squad morale or whether they were succeeding in feeling all connected I can’t tell. None of them were yelling Eureka, anyway.

Endaran was being ever-so-slightly catty toward Zan. Channelling her inner Forel.

I ravished Kaoren most forcefully after we went back to our room – I don’t take the lead in bedroom very often, but I have great fun when I do – Kaoren seems to find it maddening and incredibly arousing at the same time and I love watching him trying to control himself. I read some more of my diary to him – all of the day I was rescued – and he’s very amused that he made so little impression on me.

I love watching him sleep.

Sunday, August 10

Productivity

Today I was swapped to enhancing the Telekinetics lugging things about – assigned generally, but with Lohn and Mara being my bodyguards.

KOTIS has an assembly line of epic proportions underway to finish the handful of apartment blocks which are going to house the new guests. Each building is inspected after it’s fully formed, cleaned of any residual muck and gunk, and then the primary installations are done: power unit, water system, and the really complicated nano-waste facility. The pipe connections are double-checked, and then they start on outer doors and windows, and the heating and air-conditioning and lights and the building’s brain (main node for the interface), followed by kitchen and bathroom fittings, inner doors. Then everything’s cleaned again, and furniture placed – couch, rug, mattresses, pillows, blankets, kitchen utensils, waste baskets. There’s a team for each separate stage, trailing each other from building to building, and once the ship unloading was done and I wasn’t needed for enhancing I joined the furniture team and helped lay out rugs and mattresses and made beds and things in the first building cleared for them to work on.

The end result is sparse and samey, but of course that doesn’t factor in the Taren interface public space. They’re still designing those, but one of the technicians showed me some of the early designs, which are based on the decorations around all the windows and doors in the old town. It’s really pretty.

While most of the buildings are exactly the same layout, they’re really made different by the amount of ground which covers them – some are almost entirely aboveground, and some are almost completely buried by the rise of the land (must remember to ask why they don’t get balconies opening out into the dirt for those ones). There are one, two and three-bedroom apartments, and a small section in each building which is more communal living with individual bedrooms but shared bathrooms, kitchens and lounges. The city layout is also very variable – they worked the placement in with the existing hill scape, rather than trying to keep to a grid structure, and the roads are rather winding. It looks like people will mostly be expected to get about by underground rail. There’s even a huge underground warehouse near the HQ block.

Nanotechnology makes building so ridiculously easy for the Tarens. Ninety percent of the work is in the planning, and once they’ve done all the designing, they use nanotech to produce the model and then nanotech to transform the model to life-size. Whitestone is very strong and adaptable to almost every design, and if they make a mistake they can turn a section back into goo and adjust it. Most of the construction effort and expense then comes with the fittings.

Before heading to Mesiath, Lohn, Mara and I met up with the rest of First Squad to explore an area which will be called Desza Tohl (Moon Piazza). This is an open area designed to be the city centre, north of the science buildings, forming a crescent shape at the eastern base of the amphitheatre hill. The whitestone paving of the piazza is patterned – someone apparently spent months designing the model segments, which represent the light of the moon streaming down from the old city. Each radiating segment shows scenes of Muina’s past and present and hoped-for future, and has incorporated the swirly floral designs which decorate Kalasa. It’s really, really huge, and the pattern is interrupted by space for banks of grass and raised gardens, and these great whitestone benches which scoop up under your legs. There’ll even be a couple of pool/fountains and a sunken performance area. I could have spent all morning wandering about looking at the design if it wasn’t still mostly covered by snow, and Maze told me that if it hasn’t melted by the time of the big party, he and the other Fire talents get to hurry things along.

Two sweeping balustraded ramps have grown up the side of the hill to the amphitheatre and they dance across each other to continue the theme of the piazza. They’re going to put a vertical garden and a statue in the gap in the centre (Lohn was teasing me saying it was going to be a statue of me), and there’s some small buildings which will sell food and so forth tucked against the hill. And some elevators off to one side, which go up to the top of the hill, or down into a currently extremely empty underground whitestone cavern which is going to be a hub of the subway system when it’s installed.

It took me a while to work out what the buildings on the inner rim of the piazza reminded me of – this place in England called Bath. A solid row of buildings stretching along the massive outer curve of the crescent. The Earth version has more vertical and horizontal lines, if I remember properly, while this swirled and flowed with the stylised outlines of trees (even etched onto the glass which had just been installed on the hotel parts). These buildings are going to be museum, hotels, some kind of theatre, galleries, shops and restaurants. It also extends underground, and most of it is empty whitestone shell without windows, except for the hotel, which is getting close to furniture and fittings stage.

Maze sat on one of the benches looking very at peace and using Telekinesis to brush away the snow so I could see more of the piazza’s pattern.

"You really like all this, don’t you?" I said, sitting down with him after I’d peered at everything in range. "Putting up a city."

"There’s a great deal of satisfaction in making things, even if all I’m contributing is the heavy lifting. I’ll miss the sense of accomplishment once this stage is over. Are you ready to go to Mesiath?" He smiled when I nodded. "You’ve overcome your issues with swimming."

"I guess." I’d forgotten I had them. "Everyone’s there, so it doesn’t feel the same at all. Do you really think it’s useful? That there’s something to talent training which has been missing?"

"The training I can’t be sure about. Clearing the mind, getting some physical exercise – both are worthwhile, quite aside from whether we achieve further results." He looked wry. "At least that’s what I told our training coordinators, who consider this whole approach unscientific."

"Did you feel at all connected to anything yesterday?"

"That’s hard to say. I found myself very aware of the larger world, of the forest. Particularly when we all quieted down. Whether having an appreciation of my surroundings can make the slightest difference to my use of talent I don’t know."

We gathered together and headed back to Mesiath – which was having a minor drama because one of the technicians had been bitten by a spider and his hand had swelled up very painfully, but Auron took him off to Pandora and everything soon calmed down. Another nice swimming trip. Kaoren was glad to see me, but most of his attention was caught up by puzzling out possible approaches to being connected, and I told him I was going to paddle about in a particular spot where everyone could see me and left to avoid distracting him. There were these fantastic miniature weasel creatures lurking about the roots of the trees along the bank and I had a great time with Zan just watching them. I think Earth has something like them, but I can’t remember what they’re called.

Tsur Selkie arrived back on Muina while we were doing this, and came and looked at all his highly-trained killers lolling about in the sun. He doesn’t seem to have objected to the experiment, though, and Kaoren is definitely planning to continue. He says that he’s having trouble compartmentalising the challenge though, and is struggling to keep focus outside the swimming trips.

All the captains are at a meeting with Selkie and some other bluesuits at the moment, and I am at least going to make sure that I don’t cause any dramas.

Monday, August 11

Hunter

Ghost is here!

I was snoozing in my room after a morning testing session in the Ena (under the watchful eye of Tsur Selkie), and she woke me up with her purring and walking all over me and seems pretty damn happy to have found me. I could hardly believe it, and was so glad to see her, and petted and played with her while I decided what to do.

Not that I really had any choice. Kaoren would be hurt if I tried to keep her secret from him, and I had a snowflake’s chance in hell of actually doing so. Not to mention that she was sure to materialise abruptly in front of someone. Kaoren is at Mesiath today (I slept through lunch-time swimming), while Maze is playing construction crew, but the new satellites mean I could send a channel request to both of them which said: "What’s the Taren word for déjà vu – the feeling you get when you feel like you’ve done this before?" and streamed visual of Ghost sitting in my lap.

I think I managed to render Maze speechless. Kaoren laughed, and told me a phrase which means the same as déjà vu. After a bit of speculation on how she managed to get here, and double-checking that I was sure that it really is Ghost, they decided there really wasn’t a great deal they could do since I wasn’t willing to hand her over for experimentation (testing). Not that they’re exactly keen, even when I pointed out that she was a great stickie detector.

Second Squad seems to be here, so I think I’ll go down and introduce Ghost to them.

Filling up

After a bit of wide-eyed surprise, Second Squad (and Zee, Sefen and Eeli) proved to be a good start for Ghost. They were careful not to be too loud (even Eeli), and followed my instructions for introducing yourself to cats, and soon she was winding her way between their legs and allowing them to gingerly pet her. It’s very weird for them, though, since she is an Ionoth and even the ones they don’t kill they take good care to avoid. Eeli was in ecstasy, of course, but I noticed that not wanting to scare Ghost meant she was well able to stop herself from being noisy. Ghost, in turn, decided to adore Nils. She purred herself silly and ended up sitting on his shoulder poking her nose in his ear.

Second Squad found this hilarious, and teased him about being irresistible, but he just smiled and set Ghost on his lap and played with her until the other squads started drifting back and she went off and hid in one of the unoccupied bedrooms. Nils is still being unusually serious and subdued, but doesn’t seem unhappy or anything. Totally non-flirty, though, which is probably a good thing given that the two Kalrani assigned to Second, Nala and Joen, are taking turns going bright red or drooling whenever he’s anywhere near them. They seem like okay people despite that – even when Nils is being mild and polite he just oozes smex in a way which is hard to ignore, so I can hardly blame them for being flustered.

I wonder if Nils and Zee have had some kind of huge argument? They weren’t ignoring each other or anything, but just didn’t have much to do with each other. I’m very curious, but don’t dare ask anyone. Zee’s made it clear that I should stay out of her private life.

I did an entire episode of Planet Earth during testing – Tsur Selkie ran me through a simple visualisation and then had me tire myself out making TV – but because I spent so long sleeping and chatting and playing with Ghost I didn’t get any subtitling done. I also did some random requests – dinosaurs (excerpts from Jurassic Park, mainly) and more populous bits of Earth (I did that ad for Qantas where all these kids are singing I Still Call Australia Home in different places, and then just random fragments of bits of movies which show famous buildings).

We sat around in the evening talking about the signing ceremony. Just one week away, with people starting to arrive from two days before. It’s an insane timetable, even with Setari doing the heavy lifting and a thousand or so people (greensuits, pinksuits, greysuits) working on the actual fitting out of the buildings. All the main Telekinetic and Levitation talents are going to be devoted to construction and construction alone from now until then, although they’re still allowed to go swimming at Mesiath or back to their rooms to rest at lunch, since a long day of heavy talent-based lifting is really bad for their health. Their bodies can’t keep up with the energy output. The rest of the Setari will be doing what I was doing – helping out with whatever.

They’re planning to cycle all the active squads through Pandora again to make sure all the extra members have their security clearance. Eleventh will head back in a couple of days, and then they’ll have three staggered cycles of squads coming through, each staying a week[6].

I asked what would happen to the agreement if the Nurans changed their minds about wanting to have nothing to do with us, or some other Muina-descended group showed up and wanted to live on Muina. Which of course is something no-one can answer, since it all depends on circumstances. The Nurans still have knowledge KOTIS wants and although Inisar’s history book showed they don’t have any more idea than we do on what went wrong, they might be useful with suggestions on how to fix it. But nothing Tare’s done has convinced them to even talk about it. Tare made another attempt to send a diplomatic vessel through the rift to Nuri, and again some of Nuri’s strong psychic talents showed up almost immediately and made them turn around, and wouldn’t say anything to them except variations on "Leave now or be destroyed".

People from other Muinan-descended planets are something no-one really wants to see right now. Of course, the Ddura would try and kill them all, so the Tare-Kolar alliance is pretty safe in that regard. But saying "No, we were here first, go away" is an attitude which opens up an ethical minefield. Muina itself is so enormous and fertile and welcoming that they can’t really argue that there’s no room for other groups of descendants. Hell, if you transplanted the entire population of Tare, Kolar, Channa and Nuri to Muina, it would still be mostly empty. Channa only has about one million people (drifting about in nomadic tribes, suffering more and more from Ionoth attacks) while Nuri’s this tiny moon with maybe between two and four hundred thousand people. You could move all of Earth here and there’d still be room.

But it sure would get complicated.

Tuesday, August 12

Open your mind

I liked this morning a lot more than this afternoon.

This morning was more instant town work, with Lohn and Mara as my guards. Lohn and Mara are always worth spending time with, full of energy hauling mounds of mattresses and sheets and pillows everywhere (up all the stairs, since the elevators weren’t operational yet) and making beds. I lost count of how many beds we did, and it was amazing how tiring something so simple can be, but it was fun too. KOTIS personnel everywhere, really busy, but cheerful with it, and they get a real kick out of seeing Setari carrying about mounds of pillows. And I seem to have turned into the village mascot (which I don’t particularly like, but it’s hard to resist how pleased most people seem to be to see me).

That was this morning. This afternoon has been brain scans and people being all you did it once, try harder to do it again. And blood tests, because I needed more needles. So not in a good mood right now.

For all that, I guess it’s worth it, since Kaoren is very happy. Not understanding what the Lantarens meant about connecting with Muina was really getting to him, to the point that when we all went to go swimming today, he came along since I wanted to go, but decided he was going to take a break from attempting to puzzle out the meaning. Which was very fine with me. We went swimming about together, exploring the tumbled and drowned city. I don’t know what happened to make the lake rise to cover that part of Mesiath, but it’s a really neat place to swim through – especially when you know that there’s nothing lurking in the shadows of the buildings which registers as a threat.

We found an excellent ruin which was sheltered on all sides, and where the stone was just the right level to sit half underwater while still enjoying the streaming sunlight. We dozed in the sun for a while, until I got curious about – well, mainly I was curious as to whether Nils was anywhere near Zee – so I pushed out with my knowing where people are sense to find them. But Nils was with Lohn, Mara and Ketzaren, while Zee and Alay and Jeh seemed to be chatting. I amused myself tracking where everyone was, and then finding the little weasel things, and then all different sorts of animals, and the fish in the river – some right underneath where we were lying – and then there were birds and snakes and bugs and these large windy spaces which I eventually realised were the trees and it was really very enjoyable and relaxing doing that. I felt incredibly calm, and very pleased with myself, but then I noticed that more and more of the bright, sharp presences which were the Setari had gathered around Kaoren and me, and so I sort of drew back to myself and looked up at them.

"Can’t be that interesting to watch me daydreaming," I said, annoyed. Finding a dozen people staring at me isn’t my idea of fun.

"What were you doing?" Kaoren asked. He was sitting cross-legged just out of reach of me, and his eyes were open very wide. It was a bit disconcerting seeing him with that expression, because it’s what he looks like when he’s trying to contain himself, which he usually doesn’t need to do. Most everyone was wide-eyed.

"Just seeing how many things I could sense, and how far. If I push out really far even the trees start to be there for me." I wrinkled my nose. "And, yeah, I guess that does sound like this connecting to Muina thing that everyone has been trying to do, but it doesn’t explain why you’re all here staring at me. I don’t feel like I was pouring out a lot of energy or anything."

"It’s the mechanics of your enhancement." Kaoren made a brief, meaningless gesture with his hand – a sign that he was almost beside himself with excitement, since he rarely moves without purpose. "The technicians have yet to find any physiological explanation for how it operates. What you were doing then – deepening your connection to your surroundings – resulted in a considerable increase in the strength of your enhancement. I called Surion and Namara so that I could study how the increase was effecting them."

While he was enhanced himself, of course, and the rest of First Squad had come along to watch, along with Taarel, Regan, Endaran and the Squad Three captain, Turian.

"I could clearly feel the shift," Maze put in. "The best I can describe it is that you don’t feel the air around you unless there’s a wind." He held out a hand to me and when I moved in response, brushed the tips of his fingers against mine. "Even when your enhancement is at ordinary levels, there’s a sense now of the shift."

"Why is being able to feel when I’m enhancing you so amazing?"

"Because it’s still there when the enhancement wears," Zee said. She smiled, with just a hint of wonder edging into her eyes, which is not what I’m used to from Zee. "What you’re doing is increasing something already present. We are – we think that we have all already been connected to the Ena, all along, but our awareness – it’s like when you have worn a scent every day. You cease to be able to smell it, unless it grows stronger."

"When you enhance us, you are not channelling power to us," Kaoren continued, with the certainty which told me that this was something which had come from his Sights. "It is more that because you have such a strong connection with the Ena, contact with you causes our own connection to come more into focus, to align correctly. You aren’t increasing our powers, you’re triggering a state which we should be able to achieve on our own."

The upshot of which is that I got to spend the afternoon in the medical building, trying to reproduce my expanded state under clinical conditions for the benefit of the technicians. Only Kaoren, Maze, Zan, Zee and Taarel had touched me while my head was off among the trees, and they all continue to be aware of this scent or breeze or whatever, even if they haven’t figured out how to focus it. Naturally I haven’t been able to come anywhere close to doing it again, have just been giving myself a headache pushing myself to be able to detect everyone in Pandora and getting increasingly irritated at the group of people in the next room having a meeting about me. I can’t hear what they’re saying, I just know that they’re there. Kaoren and the other people I extra-enhanced at least were stuck having lots of tests too.

He’s so tremendously happy just being able to understand what he was missing, even if he can’t reproduce the effect (yet). We’ve been having a sporadic discussion over the interface about the implications, which are good for me in the long run, but suck in the short term, because every Setari on two planets would naturally appreciate having their connection to the Ena pointed out to them in the same way. Lots of pressure for me to get into whatever you’d call today – a trance state, maybe? Broadening of the mind? They’ve decided the best thing to do is to have me repeat as much as possible of today at Mesiath to try and trigger the expansion.

I call that taking all the fun out of it.

Thursday, August 14

On Schedule

I surprised myself by being able to get all trancey again without a whole heap of frustrating days of trying. Of course, Kaoren knows me more than well enough to work out the best way to achieve the result he wanted, making sure that I spent the morning doing more carting things about so that by the time it was lunch I really wanted a rest, and then getting me to locate and show him the miniature tree-weasels, and then chatting to me for a long while back in our secluded nook before telling me that I should attempt to locate all the Setari, but if I started getting the headaches and stress I was feeling yesterday afternoon to just stop – that the further expansion was quite possibly something I’d only be able to do on an infrequent basis.

Him and his psychological training.

At any rate, making beds and swimming about, and the early Autumn heat and sun had left me very drowsy, to the point where I almost fell asleep leaning against Kaoren’s shoulder. But – especially since I had really liked the sensation of being all expansive – I began looking about for different animals, and found it not at all difficult to follow the same route to expansion. For a while I got caught up trying to sense smaller plants than the trees, but then just pushed out as far as I could.

I didn’t exactly find a limit. I felt I could keep going further, but I started to lose any awareness of what was happening immediately around me, which was a sensation I didn’t like at all. Kaoren and Maze had been staying with me the whole time, calling up squad members two at a time, and I got really confused when it seemed to me that I’d been left alone. I had to kind of push back toward myself, and was relieved when my perception of my immediate surroundings came back. Kaoren and Maze were still with me, along with Halla and Tsur Selkie, who had come along a little before I’d gotten confused.

Drawing back into myself made me realise I was really tired – and there was something on my head. Maze had been talking – and it occurs to me to check my log, because second level monitoring does record sounds when you’re asleep – Maze was talking about whether to try and move me, but broke off when I suddenly lifted my hand and patted at this sensor pad they’d fitted on me. "Tricky," I said (unhelpfully in English) and promptly went to sleep until midday today.

There’s this increasing list of things I can do which they’re too scared to let me do. This one because I stopped registering any higher brain function, and my breath and heartbeats were coming further and further apart. They’re planning another cautious expansion experiment, but not for a couple of weeks.

When Kaoren told me about the postponement of testing, I had to ask: "Is there some kind of order which says don’t let Devlin do dangerous things until after the signing ceremony?" and he told me "There is now."

He was looking terribly tired – he’s sleeping on my lap at the moment. Even after I came back to myself, I was showing abnormally low amounts of brain activity, so he sat with me until I woke up and had been cleared by medical – he says he had a backlog of reports to review anyway. All my good intentions to not worry and stress Kaoren out aren’t making any difference.

On the positive side of things, all the Setari on Muina are now aware of the wind of the Ena or whatever analogy they’re using at the moment. They’d brought a drone along (without telling me) and were getting what readings they could off me and the Setari while I was trancing out. The extra enhancement only lasts while they’re actually in contact with me – if they move away it drops down to the normal enhancement for the usual period. The extra enhancement is also a bit too much for the Setari – it’s not something they can endure for very long at all, and they think it might be dangerous for them to use high-energy talents while enhanced.

And I’m feeling really quite good. No headache, very well rested. Caught up with the latest episodes of The Hidden War (it’s funny that Ghost showed up on Muina about a week after the episode where Ghost arrived in The Hidden War). This new episode aired a few days ago and Mori had already warned me what was in it, but I’d not got around to watching it yet. It was a big double-episode covering everyone getting knocked out by the aether at the Pillar, the retrieval mission, Ghost showing up in my hospital room, and then Kaoren asking me what I’d meant about aether being moonlight. I think these were meant to be separate episodes and they were just showing them back to back because the timing ties up very conveniently with the signing ceremony. The next episode, which will almost certainly be the Muina mission where I give the squads with me security clearance, airs on Tare in two days, which happens to be the day when everyone’s supposed to start arriving here.

It’s only four days until the signing ceremony. And, urg, I just had about a million things added to my schedule. Lunches and dinners with people, tours of sites, an open-air concert, and then the signing ceremony and the celebratory banquet. I pulled my sickie a few days too early, though I suppose I could have a shot at experimenting with mind expansion the day before the signing and then getting to spend the day in bed. I get the feeling just pretending to have a sore throat isn’t going to be enough to get me out of this.

At least, looking at his calendar, they’ve had the sense to schedule Kaoren to be with me all the time. And Maze, it seems.

Bleh, and Fifth Squad’s just arrived.

Friday, August 15

Comedic Set Piece

Woke up just before dawn because I could hear the Ddura making the hunting noise. And then Ghost came pelting out of nowhere, dived under the covers and tried to hide underneath me, all shaking and trembling. When she reached me the note of the Ddura’s call changed, to the confused sound it makes when it’s puzzled about new arrivals and their faked security passes.

I hadn’t even thought of that, when Ghost showed up. That the Ddura would hunt her. I could tell Kaoren had, by the complete lack of surprise he showed when I woke him, and the faint hint of relief that I hadn’t had to watch my cat get slaughtered. I asked him why he hadn’t warned me, so I could have sent her back to Tare, but he pointed out that it was more a matter of warning Ghost, since they had little chance of preventing her from simply returning, even if they managed to get her to leave.

Kaoren and I wrangled over whether it was a good idea not to warn me about things I couldn’t do anything about (not an argument – we’ve managed not to properly argue with each other yet – we really don’t want to). Then I checked and found that Nils was awake, so opened a channel and explained what had happened, and asked if he could take Ghost back with him when Second returns to Tare. He said Of course. I think he was really worried about her – she’d been sleeping on his stomach, and woken him up in a total panic and then bolted off.

I made an attempt to reconcile Ghost and Kaoren, but she was very busy trying to hide in my armpit, and didn’t seem at all interested in forgiving him for levitating her. Before this morning, Ghost wouldn’t stay around at all when Kaoren is with me – she goes and rides around on Nils instead. She’s with him now, but she stuck with me obsessively while we were out and about today.

She also made morning smex a little impossible, so we went down and had an extra-early breakfast with Nils and went out into the chill to look at the patches of grass and plants poking through the snow. No flowers yet. Since the guests for the ridiculous party were due to start arriving from tomorrow, everyone else got up early too. Not all the prep work was finished today, either – they’ll be completing the last few buildings even as people start using the first ones.

Kaoren’s very good at making beds. He has a bright career in hotel service. It was really funny watching Sonn watch Kaoren make beds. Like she thought it would be beneath his dignity or something. Not that I didn’t get a big kick out of it myself, especially because he can’t help but figure out the most efficient way to distribute boxes of mattresses, pillows and linen from the entrance of the building so that we could make them with the least amount of tromping back and forth.

Next we went out to Moon Piazza to meet Maze and Ketzaren. Even though the day was turning out nice and warm, they had decided to clear the thicker drifts of snow off. The signing ceremony is going to be there, and they’ll be setting up the day after tomorrow.

Ketzaren enhanced and created this massive howling windstorm to push the loose snow together (using Telekinesis over such a vast space would be way too exhausting). Maze, Sonn, Kaoren and I sat with her on one of the curving tiers of the vertical garden walls and watched (well, I was theoretically assisting by enhancing). It’s really rare that Ketzaren uses her wind powers, because there’s only a few spaces where it’s useful and she produced a truly spectacular gale (which caught a few greensuits unawares) sending all the snow flurrying upward. We were out of the main force of the wind, but Ghost still hated it and hid inside my coat.

Maze went and melted the big piles Ketzaren had made, and did a tour about finding pockets which had been blown under benches while the rest of us wandered about looking at the fully revealed design. Lohn and Nils showed up (they’re really good friends and I can tell Lohn’s sorry that Second won’t be staying long), and they both teased me mercilessly about the sections of pavement which show my arrival at Pandora, and then the Setari around the platform and its unlocking. And also the massive battle, which surprised me. Then it moved to settlement and discovery images. I didn’t mind these images, because they’re pretty stylised and abstract, and could be any random girl really, but Lohn kept insisting that he really meant it that there was going to be a statue of me, and Maze finally confirmed that there was going to be some kind of group statue which would include me. He didn’t know the precise details – there’s supposed to be a grand unveiling on the day of the signing. It’s by one of Kolar’s most famous sculptors. I can live with it if it’s a group statue, I guess, but I’m still not very keen on the idea.

Looking like he found my reaction very funny, Maze suggested we break for lunch, but then another ship came in and he had to go help with the unloading first. Kaoren went to fetch lunch, while Sonn, Ketzaren, Lohn, Nils and I climbed back up onto the tiered garden and watched the greensuits, who had arrived to plant up the garden beds out on the piazza with alternating white and pink and blue flowers. Lohn said that they were the same plants which were coming up everywhere at Pandora, but from further south, where it was a little warmer.

Ghost got busy seducing Sonn, who couldn’t quite manage to not pet her, despite really wanting to be all proper about Ionoth. It occurred to her that the Ddura might hunt Ghost, and I explained what had happened that morning and how Nils was going to take her back to Tare. Kaoren came back with the food and we were unpacking it and having a really serious discussion about how strange it was to be protective of an Ionoth, when I felt some people take the elevator down from the top of the hill and follow the wall of the piazza.

Two girls, three guys, the black Setari uniform making them stand out against the whitestone paving. One of the guys was saying how big a waste of time it was to go running around blindly.

"I want to talk to her," said the girl who was tromping along out in front. Se-Ahn Surat, the actress who plays me in The Hidden War, trailed by the show’s lead actress, Lanset Kameer (Nori), and then the actors who play Faer, Lastier and Nori’s best friend (and the guy she should be in love with) Searns. All of us on the garden wall froze in a kind of amazed disbelief.

"So talk to her tomorrow, when you’re scheduled to meet her," said Eyle Sured (Faer). "You’ll delay the shoot running off."

"You and Lanset have all the first scenes," Se-Ahn replied. "And being at the same dinner with Caszandra and a hundred other people including the Rukmar of Performance Arts is not a conversation. The only way I’m ever going to get any idea what the wretched creature is like is to corner her somewhere."

"And how will you convince her to talk?" asked Teral Saith (Lastier). He, like Roak Larion (Searns), was lagging behind, distracted by the patterns in the paving. "She’s refused every interview request so far."

"I’ll think about that when I find her," Se-Ahn said, pausing to survey the long curve of buildings. "And given how painfully wrong your portrayal has been, I don’t see why you don’t want to do a little research yourself."

"A little late for me to strive for accuracy. I’d rather keep the character as consistent as I can after all the script-butchery." Teral (who fortunately looks less like Kaoren in real life) shrugged. "Besides, it’s perfectly possible for him to be an arrogant bastard and get the girl. She might suit him perfectly – I find it hard to believe Caszandra can be as improbably sweet and heroic as you’re playing her, at least."

"Either way you’re going to have to follow the script," Lanset Kameer pointed out, sounding annoyed and a little upset. "You think we’re not curious as well? Fifteen years we’ve been asking to meet the Setari, or at least tour the KOTIS facilities. Tomorrow we’ll finally be able to talk to some of them. Unless you get us banned from the site trailing aimlessly about. You don’t even know which direction to go."

Maze and Par chose this moment to fly past in the distance toting a couple of big cargo containers. All five actors fell silent to watch them drop down out of sight well to the south-east.

"You’d never get there and back in time," Roak Larion said. "Not walking."

Lohn, by this point, was close to swallowing his own hand trying to restrain himself. Sonn had gone all tight-lipped and was looking daggers at Teral. Nils and Ketzaren were leaning against each other shaking with silent laughter. Kaoren had almost shut his eyes, which he does when he’s angry, or when he’s very pleased with something.

Since it takes a hell of a lot more than comments from actors to get him angry, and because I was feeling a bit sorry for Lanset Kameer, I called down: "They won’t stay very long at the warehouse. They’d be gone before you got there."

The frozen disbelief this produced was enough to send Lohn rolling. Kaoren brushed his fingers against mine, then lifted all five of them up to the metre-thick wall. That was a bit of a challenge for him – he can use Levitation and Telekinesis at the same time, and enhanced can lift up to four hundred kilos with each, but five separate objects at the same time is difficult for his strength level.

"Not improbably sweet," Kaoren said. "I won’t try to gauge the level of bastardry. Sit down."

Instant obedience. Kaoren’s such a captain, even when he’s indulging his sense of humour. But these were very famous actors, and recovered quickly enough, and there were introductions and questions, some of which we answered. Maze came back, and was rather resigned about it all, but very nice as he always is. Lohn and Nils were extra-charming and held off on the teasing, and even Sonn unbent a little. Ketzaren took them away after lunch, and Kaoren, Sonn and I went back to making beds and, as Kaoren pointed out, would now hopefully not have to worry about avoiding being cornered anywhere. Except for the several thousand other people who might try the same thing.

Avoiding Fifth Squad is another issue. It’s not that they’re being rude or hostile or sneering or anything – not with Maze around and Tsur Selkie prone to turning up unexpectedly – but I don’t feel like sitting around the common room chatting when any of them are there. Not that that’s really a problem, since Kaoren and I enjoy a lot of private time.

The actors were okay people, but I’m really not looking forward to the next couple of days.

Tuesday, August 19

All Eyes

Finally over with.

It’s been three days of breakfast with group one, tour with group two, lunch with group three, meeting with group four, dinner with group five. Too many names and faces and endless questions to politely squirm out of answering fully. Two mini-concerts and some talks given by the scholarly types on the discoveries which had been made. The concerts and talks were a bit of a relief, because no-one was asking me questions during them. And yesterday afternoon the signing ceremony, and the unveiling of the statue, and endless speeches and announcements about Muina’s future, and then an afternoon banquet (they couldn’t have it at night because there’s no prepared rooms big enough for that many people, and the temperature is still dropping too drastically at sunset for an outdoor meal). Then, I’m told, there were bunches of alcohol-fuelled after-parties and a hell of a lot of networking and deal-making and discussion because after all how often do so many important people get together?

Kaoren was with me almost all the time, with Maze, Zee or Zan providing secondary back-up. I’d been wondering if someone would show up with a dress and tell me to wear it, but fortunately we didn’t have to fuss about clothing and could just wear our uniforms, even for the party. Black goes with everything, after all. I would have liked to have seen Kaoren in those strange Taren formal outfits though.

I hardly remember most of what was said to me, and have been reviewing a few of my answers in my log. Scads of VIPs who wanted to know how much of The Hidden War was true (my stock answer was that the events were for the most part correct if a little out of order, but the people were very different), and who wanted more details about this or that or the other part of my adventures. Bunches of VIPs who had questions about Earth. More than a few VIPs who wanted to know very personal things. Three or four VIPs (or, mostly, their adult children) who made almost openly suggestive comments even with Kaoren there and looking at them in his most unimpressed way.

Only a few parts stand out for me. The Rukmar of Performing Arts was this very funny little man, all mischief and delight, and totally wanted to know everything about Earth musical instruments. I hadn’t paid a lot of attention, but of course the episodes of Planet Earth which I’ve been subtitling have been transmitted back to Tare and Kolar – I’m practically a cottage film industry. The Rukmar didn’t care so much about all the animals, as the music played in the background, and wanted to know the names of all the instruments and styles of music used. He adores the violins – the Tarens and Kolarens do have an instrument which involves strings and a bow, but it’s this tall, kind of wibbly-sounding instrument which sounds totally different.

Since that was at dinner, and I could go to bed after, I made a projection of an orchestra for him, showing people using the usual sorts of instruments, and then did a projection of the instrumental version of Eleanor Rigby for him. He was just skipping with delight, and was a lot of fun to talk to.

Ghost caused a bit of a fuss, since so many people arriving meant the Ddura kept turning up and so she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. Lots of strong reactions from people, but mostly positive, even though she’s an Ionoth. She is terribly cute. One of the Rukmars had brought her kids along (a pair of twins around ten years old), and they positively stalked me because not only was Ghost a very appealing cat, she was one which kept turning invisible.

I sat between Isten Notra and Kaoren for all the formal speech-making and watching of the signing, and Isten Notra told me on a private channel how they’d decided on a paper signing for the Kolarens' benefit, even though many of the Tarens had had to then learn how to physically sign something. Isten Notra made the whole ceremony easier to get through.

There was one speech – one of the elected leaders of Kolar’s southern pole talking about how she’d grown up believing that the people who had fled Muina had a shameful past, that there was little to gain in constantly looking back. It was only when she’d seen the projection of the ritual at Kalasa that she’d felt that there was more to the story than overweening pride and death, that there was something to be embraced. She had tears in her eyes. So did Isten Notra, who patted my hand. A lot of the speeches were pretty mortifying for me, but at least they let me stay sitting down.

The statue, which arrived the day before yesterday, wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It was basically a huge white column with a slanted top (more moonbeam imagery) made out of some kind of quartzy rock growing out of a base of dusty-looking grey stone which kind of made you want to stroke it. There was a hazy outline of a figure inside the column, tall and androgynous and meant to be Muina. Sitting at the base of the column was me, in slightly darker dusty grey. Someone had obviously given the sculptor an extract of the mission report from my retrieval, because it was the exact image of me from Sonn’s log – sitting wide-eyed, ill and alone on a rock, my school bag held against my legs, my uniform looking worn and tattered. Standing to my right, though, were Kaoren and Sonn, again in darker stone: incredibly cold and professional and upright. And to my left were Shaf and Nalaz from Kolar’s first squad – Nalaz was gazing all far-eyed into the distance, but Shaf was looking down at me with the faintest hint of a smile. Bit of a Kolaren bias there. Still, not being the only one represented makes the statue relatively tolerable for me. Especially because Kaoren looks particularly gorgeous.

Lots of big announcements along with the signing. KOTIS is going to continue to be in ultimate control for twenty Taren years – military rule – while Muina’s initial stage of settlement is underway. After a Taren year after the signing, all the residents and citizens of Muina will be asked to nominate a provisional ruling council to begin ratifying Muina’s system of laws and government, which are likely to end up being a compromise between Tare’s and Kolar’s. The biggest announcement was the opening of the application process to be a Muinan colonist. There would be certain requirements (psychological testing for being able to stand being outside for Tarens) and lack of criminal convictions and desired skill areas, and obviously being young and healthy and talented with dozens of degrees and an artistic bent helps, but it sounded like it would be possible to just get lucky for some applicants, which is nice. It’s going to be really weird when people start calling Pandora home. Isten Notra and Shon are both going to become permanent Muinans, and at least half of the staff already on-site at Pandora are predicted to apply to bring their families here. The Setari aren’t allowed to apply, as yet.

I’m having a very quiet day – almost everyone has a leave day now that they’re done playing escort to VIPs – and Kaoren and I stayed in our room all morning, except for a dawn trip downstairs to grab breakfast and also some stuff to take away for a picnic lunch. The only other person I’ve spoken to is Nils, who came in with Ghost riding on his shoulder – he said he likes watching the mist which has started rising on the lake recently. We talked about Ghost while Kaoren was looking for something to put the food in – I double-checked whether Nils really was okay with taking Ghost with him, but he absolutely is enjoying having a pet. I was glad, and said he’d seemed kind of down lately, and he gave me an amused look and said Ruuel made me far too scary a proposition to flirt with. But then was more serious and told me his father had died recently, so he’d been a little preoccupied, but there was no need to worry on his account. And then teased me about being in danger of being overly sweet.

I’m glad Ghost decided to adopt Nils as her human.

Since the Ddura was still in the area, we took Ghost with us on our picnic, flying down to the otter stream a bit before lunchtime. They’re still there – I’m so glad about that. And glad that I can tell where living things are, since they were hidden away in some kind of burrow and didn’t show themselves for an age. We ate lunch and enjoyed the peace and quiet and the views, and now Kaoren is practicing sensing his connection with the Ena and trying to focus it without me touching him – something which he’s found impossible to attempt the past few days. Everyone’s still diligently working on this when they get the chance, but hectic mandatory socialising doesn’t exactly make for the best atmosphere. I’m writing this up while watching Ghost explore, and Kaoren says we have to jog back to Pandora later (and has been talking to Zee about amping up my training, bleh).

Double bleh – a bunch of people just flew overhead gawking at us. It’ll be a couple of days before all of the tourists and news reporters have been shuffled back to Tare and Kolar, though most of the really important VIPs are already gone. But soon there’ll be people actually living here – non-KOTIS people, I mean.

Wednesday, August 20

The best laid plans…

Overwhelming day. The only good thing I can say about it is that I’ve continued my run of not being seriously injured.

It started when Tsur Selkie woke me and Kaoren up hours before dawn and asked us to come down to the common room where he was waiting. He’d been reviewing the logs from the last time the Tarens had sent a ship to Nuri and been turned back, and wanted to enhance and also for Kaoren to enhance and review them as well. I’m not sure if he was actually reviewing all this stuff at 3 am, or had maybe been having the kind of insightful nightmares that Sight Sight talents suffer from.

I looked at the logs as well, but all I saw was some fields and trees and a guy dressed like Inisar floating in the air in front of what I guess must have been a hovering spaceship. He didn’t project telepathically, just kept repeating in a stern voice that they had to leave or be destroyed, which the ship fortunately had the external sensors to pick up. Kaoren and Selkie watched it three times, then Selkie said: "Your evaluation?"

"There is an overlay of…constraint." Kaoren was frowning, looking very puzzled, and shook his head. "A reading from scans rarely works for me with Sight. Symbol shows a guard turning away an intruder, implacable rejection. But still, there is a hint of something more. And – I have a sense of urgency."

Selkie nodded, all curt and intense. "This is similar, a stronger impression, to what I saw with the one named Inisar. There I interpreted the sense as disobedience, twisting orders to suit his own purposes when he provided that book. Yet here I have the same sense, on a far stronger level. It is almost as if this Nuran is acting against his own will."

"Mind control?" Kaoren said, doubtfully, while I said, "Geas?"

They both gave me that wide-eyed and still reaction which means one of their Sights has triggered, then Selkie made me explain what the word meant. "Just myth and fiction," I said. "A kind of spell put on people to make them perform a particular task. But – Inisar was obeying strictly to the letter of his orders, yet able to work around it, and that’s how geases are said to work."

"Have you been able to visualise using an individual as point of focus, rather than a place?" Selkie asked.

"Have had real dreams of Kaoren a few times," I admitted, going all hot and embarrassed. "Haven’t tried to do that when I’m awake, though."

"Ever while on different planets?" Selkie asked

I shook my head. Kaoren caught and kept hold of my hand while he watched the logs again.

"Constraint," he repeated. "And urgency."

"Very well," Selkie said, and brought us into a channel, then sent override requests to the captains of all of the other squads on-site – First, Second, Third, Fifth, Twelfth, Squad Three and Squad One (who had been sent to attend the ceremonies) – and also Zee, who I’ve started to realise does a lot of captain-duties in a kind of senior female capacity.

Selkie’s override message said: "Prepare for Ena mission, channel members only, secure event." Which means they couldn’t tell the rest of their squads. Kaoren grabbed a bunch of energy drinks from the kitchen, and I hit the ground floor bathroom.

As soon as everyone was awake (and presumably able to process what he was saying), Selkie went on to describe Inisar’s second visit (something which I’m pretty sure only Maze and Kaoren knew among the Setari), then went on to say: "Sights indicate that there are critical developments on Nuri. We are going to attempt to use Devlin to visualise the situation there."

I’d hate to be a Setari captain, woken up in the middle of the night just to watch me. It was finding out that there’d been events they hadn’t been told about which would be the bigger issue, though. But they didn’t comment, or show more than a crisp readiness to get on with the job – even Kajal was totally proper.

We went to the same spot I’d previously been testing in, hauling along the usual drone and medical monitoring chair. Selkie told me to attempt to visualise without projecting until I had some idea of how much energy it was going to cost me, then stepped back to let me try on my own.

I closed my eyes to do it, picturing Inisar as I’d seen him last, but not getting anywhere. Deciding that he mightn’t necessarily be dressed the same way, I just began repeating his name to myself. And saw him, not the tall, proud samurai, but a filth-smeared man sitting chained to a wall, wrists held above his head by glossy white manacles, face swollen and bruised, chest covered in burns. Shock made me open my eyes, and I found that as usual I hadn’t managed to just visualise. But the projection of a single room isn’t really that much extra energy for me, and being in the Ena had made other-planetary visualisation not nearly as hard as the first time.

"Nuri leaders not very nice people," I said, after a horrified moment. Inisar had been seriously tortured.

"Those burns–" Maze said, voice flat.

"Cruzatch." Selkie looked at me. "Are you able to move your focus point?"

I tried, but it made me feel queasy. Regan and Taarel were at the projection’s door, a very solid white slab. "Nothing we couldn’t break," Regan said.

"It’s likely the projection continues outside the room," Kaoren said, then moved forward and cautiously touched the projected Inisar’s shoulder with a gloved hand.

The Nuran’s unswollen eye flickered open, and he looked up at Kaoren, then turned his head and looked at me. Even so very battered he still managed the same look-right-through-you expression he’d been wearing the first time I’d seen him.

"Child of Gaia," he said, voice a hoarse whisper, then looked toward Selkie (who doesn’t let being short stop him from being the one obviously in charge). "Nuri is lost," he continued, totally without inflection. "Betrayed from within. They will hunt the Gaian child, for she is valuable to them. And a threat. As you have become. Guard your people."

"How has Nuri been lost?" Selkie asked, then paused when I stood up – which was really not an easy thing to do – moving and projecting at the same time made me totally dizzy.

Fortunately he was only a couple of steps forward. I knelt down and put the back of my hand to his cheek – the same gesture Kaoren had made for me once. His skin felt cold.

"It’s a projection, Cassandra," Kaoren said. "Aiding it will not alter the Nuran’s situation."

"But isn’t everything connected?" I asked, and pushed out as I had been doing at Mesiath, not to sense the living creatures around me, but to follow the link which had to exist for me to be able to see what was happening to Inisar. That was a weird moment, as if I’d moved out of a tiny box into a cathedral, except I felt like I was being smothered, like I was surrounded by glue. The projection faltered, but it was like when I was in Earth’s near-space talking to my family, and I could see Inisar still, a greyed-out image of him, and just vaguely feel his skin against my hand shifting as he woke and looked at me and his unswollen eye went very wide.

It took everything I had to lift my hand to the funny-looking seal thing which fastened the chains of his manacles to the wall above his head. Moving was harder even than projecting seal which was cracked, was shattered, broken, falling to dust. There was a moment like being at the bottom of a pit and having an ocean drop into it, a thooming resettling of whatever I was holding out of the way and then I was just kneeling in Muina’s near-space, dripping with sweat and shaking.

Kaoren, keeping himself out of touching distance just in case, moved into my line of sight and I flapped one hand to show I wasn’t about to have a heart attack. He nodded, then said to Selkie: "Those manacles were more than a physical restraint. Whether freeing a badly injured man will make any difference to Nuri being lost I cannot see."

I couldn’t tell if Selkie was angry that I’d gone and done my own thing, but obviously the news that Nuri had apparently been overrun by Cruzatch (or something) was an overwhelming development, and he ordered us back into real-space, upgraded Muina’s security status, and sent the Diodel screaming off to Tare with the news. After that was a nail-pulling delay because it’s a kasse to reach the rift on Muina, in addition to the time for a return trip through deep-space. Once the Diodel reached Tare they just waited at the rift until they had return orders. Kaoren said that one thing we obviously need to do is ensure that there’s a ship stationed at all times near the rift on Muina so that there’s less delay in sending urgent messages. The small Arenrhon settlement is closer, but unfortunately there’s no working platforms there (and apparently even with security clearance standing on the Arenrhon platform takes you nowhere – I hadn’t even known they tested that).

Naturally I spent most of this time in medical, having scans done (and sleeping, since I was pretty tired), but did manage before falling asleep to talk with Kaoren about my occasional tendency to be impulsive. He admitted he wasn’t exactly happy that I’d done that without any warning, but nor did he feel that he could ask me not to do anything like that again, since that would amount to asking me not to try and help someone who had tried to help me, and neither of us would be happy to be in that situation.

It was just after dawn when a response finally came back from Tare that they were going to send a ship to Nuri to investigate the situation. Setari squads were deployed to active guard at Kalasa and Pandora, and personnel withdrawn from Arenrhon and Mesiath. The remaining squads had been ordered to rest, though I’m not sure if anyone managed it. I woke up about an hour after this, and quietly fretted about the whole idea of three planets being put on security alert because of something I’d projected. And fretted more about how I’d feel if the ship didn’t come back, if it was destroyed investigating. Kaoren had me released from medical and we ate breakfast, then had a shower and lay down together to talk and rest more. We were both really keyed up, and though lying together in the dark helped a little, neither of us could pretend to be anything but really worried. It was mid-morning when a ship brought word of the Nuri investigation, and we were both beyond stressed out by then.

And Nuri was gone.

The investigating ship had recorded very odd readings from the Nuri gate and chosen not to fly through it – and lost three drones before finally succeeding in getting one to go into Nuri real-space and return. It came back incredibly damaged, its scans showing what looked like an asteroid field. No-one had expected that, and everyone’s seriously freaked. Even massives pale in comparison to moons blowing up.

After we heard the news I kept finding myself on the verge of making comments about Death Stars, or a million voices crying out at once, and despite being hugely upset I couldn’t get my mind off not-funny things to say. Nuri isn’t a place I’ve been, and so most of the people there weren’t more than an abstract idea for me. But Inisar was real, and tried to help, and was tortured for it. And whatever I did wasn’t enough.

There was a kind of frozen patch during the middle of the day where we were waiting to hear more orders, and no-one had any real suggestion about what we could do other than fret and watch ships take off, hastily ferrying more officials back to Tare and Kolar. Except for a handful of people who refused to return on the grounds that Muina was safer because of the Ddura. Orders finally came through after lunch, recalling most of the Setari squads to their home planets, with just First and Fourth remaining here with me. All Setari were given an overriding mission of finding the Cruzatch’s home space – the best defence being a good offence approach.

But the captain of the Diodel – the ship which brought the orders – completely threw everything askew again by announcing that on the trip back they’d seen people, hundreds of people, in deep-space. It had only been a glimpse, and deep-space is incredibly weird, but the ship’s scanners had recorded it. They think it might be survivors from Nuri, and all the Setari on Muina, and me, have been sent to investigate. Not long to the rift now. The big party seems like forever ago.

Thursday, August 21

Fallen

We went in three ships – the Litara and Diodel and one called the Chune. The idea was that if there were survivors in deep-space, we might just be able to cram them aboard. If there were too many, one ship would be sent to bring more ships while the Setari helped protect them.

Deep-space is hellish to navigate. Visually it’s white with rainbow washes, and it’s full of gates which are only visible from certain angles. It does have a kind of ground but the level of it – and angle of it – is unpredictable. It’s an Escher drawing where all the lines have been erased, and going off course could result in a collision or unexpected emergence in a dangerous part of real-space. And, of course, it’s where deep-space Ionoth come from, although it’s so vast and weird that ships rarely encounter them. The Diodel went in lead to the point where the people had been sighted, scanning madly, while the other two ships lagged well behind. Third Squad was on the Diodel, with Eeli trying to path find.

The rest of the squads were on the Litara, and Kaoren went off to have a captain’s discussion about how to deal with going outside ships in deep-space. It’s not totally full of aether, fortunately, but aether tends to collect around the rifts and even though it doesn’t hurt Muinans, it’s still not something they want to fight in. I sat with Zee and petted Ghost (who I couldn’t risk leaving behind and who was really twitchy and unhappy). Nobody was talking. Ever since the report of the Nuri investigation had come back, everyone had barely seemed able to put two words together. The discovery that the problem had reached the stage of Cruzatch invasions and moons exploding – despite the Nurans being the most talent-rich settlement – made it all seem beyond discussing. Everyone was drained and grim.

The fact that I’d been brought along at all was a sign of how desperately KOTIS wanted more detailed information. Only by properly understanding what had happened to Nuri could KOTIS make a real evaluation of the current threat level, and what steps it would need to take to prevent the same thing happening to the worlds it protected.

We were all in mission channel, though the only people talking were Taarel and Eeli giving feedback on path finding on the lead ship. I’d only been half-watching the output from the Diodel's scanners, and started when Taarel said crisply: "Massive sighted."

I checked the multiple screens of feed to see not only an enormous, spindly, vaguely humanoid, um, scratch figure, but also accompanying swoops – and a huge fireball taking them out. It wasn’t a very good view – the massive kept vanishing as bits of folded deep-space got in the way – but it was a pretty sure bet that where there were fireballs there were survivors. The Diodel changed direction and began working out how to reach them, and we trailed along behind, achingly slow.

When we finally got a proper glimpse of the survivors, I wasn’t the only one who caught her breath and stared to confirm what Taarel (rather less crisply) said: "Survivors sighted. Thousands. Children. It’s almost all children."

I’m willing to bet Taarel practically never lets her voice shake like that. The Captain of the Litara immediately ordered the Chune to go on to Tare and report, and then Maze began talking everyone through how we were going to go about fighting, once we were able to get within range. The navigation tools were going to be overlaid directly into the Setari’s channel, making a visual representation of the landscape we couldn’t properly see. The roof of the Diodel would be the staging point. Wind talents would focus primarily on any encroaching aether. Par was going to be my toter. Squads were to stick tightly together and, if possible, draw the massive’s attention away from the survivors.

I tucked Ghost in a pod when it was time to go outside – not that it would hold her, but I was hoping she would get the message. We paused on the roof of the Litara and Kaoren enhanced to start with, and took the opportunity to give me a long survey, very much in captain mode. I was feeling a bit weird – like I’d been on a boat and had come ashore and was still feeling the waves – but nothing major. Deep-space, like all of the Ena, is uncomfortably cold but unlike the spaces it feels particularly strange and wrong.

As the Diodel and the Litara took up a hovering position as close as they were willing to go, another fireball took down another cluster of swoops, but the massive was leaning forward, reaching down a…well, not so much a hand as a hand-shape. That massive was the weirdest thing I’ve seen yet – a three-dimensional humanoid shape, but formed out of scratchy nothingness. It wasn’t even solid – it was like cross-hatching around a pearly-white mist.

"Light will be best," Kaoren said. "All others to lesser effect. Sound may usefully disorient. We need to open the chest and use Light within. Avoid physical contact at all costs."

"First we’ll draw it back to the marked position," Maze added, as the massive’s hand was knocked aside. He signalled for enhancements to begin while he outlined a quick plan of attack.

I was staring at the Nurans, ignoring the quick succession of hands touching me. There were so many kids, all in a single huge mass with just a few figures flying above them. I couldn’t count how many. The younger ones, huddled in the centre, looked tiny: three or four years old.

More and more information about the area ahead was appearing in the channel’s simulation, including a big circle outlining relatively clear ground to the right of the massive. Maze’s plan for getting the massive’s attention involved a strafing run up the length of it and over its head, trying to draw it toward that area. I wasn’t involved in that (and couldn’t even bear to watch it). A second group had been assigned to getting rid of the swoops and, after they’d enhanced, my small guard group (Kaoren included) carefully followed the massive as it turned.

The thing looked so fragile and intangible. But that was half the problem – it mightn’t move quickly, but attacks seemed as effective as shooting arrows into a haystack. Worse, another cluster of swoops lifted into view, right where the main attack force had been headed and the leading edge of Setari suddenly found itself in close combat and in disarray. I saw people fall, and closed my eyes.

"Throw the swoops at the massive’s chest," Kaoren ordered, which has to be one of the odder tactics he’s come up with. But it seemed effective – particularly since two of the swoops were encased in blocks of ice – and the cross-hatching was ripped away to expose pearly interior. Maze immediately gave the order for the Light talents to blast, and the thing reeled, and covered its chest with an arm.

"Group two, gather up the swoops you’re fighting and hit it from behind," Maze said. "Light talents circle to join them. Second, Squad Three, continue the frontal assault to keep it oriented."

My group paused, then joined up with the Light talent group so they could re-enhance. I saw Lohn’s face – stiff and white-lipped – and realised Mara was one of those who’d been caught by the swoops and injured. When the next order came for him to attack, he did so with a furious anger, putting everything he had into it.

The thing fell – the quickest massive fight so far, but the one with the highest number of injuries I’d seen. Only Grif Regan and Alay from First and Second hadn’t been hurt. Mara was bleeding badly – a swoop had flown right into her, raking and biting and she’d used her arm as a shield against its teeth. Combat Sight apparently doesn’t work very well when you’ve got a massive on one side of you emanating overwhelming threat. And when it had crumpled and pitched over, a lot of the forward group had barely avoided being crushed, and been jolted with agonising pain which had left them all weak and sick and meant that a few of them fell hard because the person levitating them abruptly stopped. Best I can tell it was like instant radiation poisoning – though fortunately something they started recovering from once they’d moved out of range.

Maze was temporarily out of it, but Regan took over command without more than a moment’s pause, getting the Levitation and Telekinesis talents to let their squads down at the nearest edge of the vast stretch of Nurans, and then take the worst of the Setari injured straight up to the Litara.

There were eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty-nine Nurans.

Or, at least, eight thousand, seven hundred and sixty-nine Nurans were how many there were when we got them to Pandora and counted them. There might have been more during the fight, but I don’t like to think about that since it really was almost all kids. Only six hundred or so adults. We only got that figure this morning. Coming down from the air, all I could think was what had happened to their parents, and I guess Regan was wondering the same thing since, as soon as three of the Nurans who had been defending the survivors dropped down to join us, he asked: "Are there other groups we need to look for?"

"This is all of Nuri," said the woman who stepped forward to talk. She was basically a female version of Inisar – same hairstyle, same clothes, same upright calm – except absolutely exhausted, and her eyes were red-rimmed. It was the woman who’d been watching my testing session back on Tare. I could tell that because of my weird people sense, and I searched about for Inisar as well, but couldn’t make him out among all the other Nurans and felt rotten, though it turned out that he was there, just badly injured and unconscious.

Regan and the woman quickly got down to practicalities, postponing any explanation of what had happened to Nuri in favour of sorting out the injured and getting them and the youngest kids on board the Diodel and Litara. And bringing down everything the two ships had in the way of supplies, since the kids had been walking for hours in the cold without food or water. They were at least reasonably dressed – Nuri mustn’t have been a shorts and Singlet kind of place – but most of them were dropping from exhaustion.

I don’t know if there was any argument about whether to take the Nurans on to Muina, or to Tare or Kolar instead. Still, even though Muina isn’t exactly set up to look after thousands of orphaned kids, anyone who knew anything of Nuri wouldn’t doubt what planet the Nurans wanted to be on. They’d walked almost the entire way there.

While the Litara and Diodel were being loaded, the captains gathered together with the three Nurans (with an audience of a few hundred more in earshot) and talked over whether to continue the trek through deep-space or wait in the same spot, weighing up the threat posed by the Ddura once they’d reached Muina compared to the almost certain attack by more deep-space Ionoth. It was Taarel who suggested that people be sent to all of the platform towns, to call the Ddura to them. That way they’d be certain no Ddura would be scouting the area around the rift, giving KOTIS a chance to ferry everyone to Pandora by ship.

By the time they’d decided to push on, the Litara was crammed full of children. The Setari who’d been sick after getting too close to the massive had recovered (more or less, they looked pretty grey), and Maze and the lead Nuran, whose name was Korinal, discussed the route, then distributed the Setari squads to each corner of the huge mass of children.

Nuran kids are very quiet and obedient. Or maybe it’s just that they were all dead on their feet, too tired to even cry any more. They ranged from toddlers to nearly my age, with a smattering of adults, and seemed very wary of the Setari and the ships, but didn’t put up any fuss about being taken away. The only other question Maze asked Korinal before the Litara and Diodel started off was whether Kolar, Tare and Muina were likely to be under imminent threat. The short answer was no, which was a huge relief.

The long answer had to wait for another couple of hours, until we had reached and cleared the rift gate, since too much attention and energy had to be given to navigating deep-space’s weirdness, with pauses to fight Ionoth (no more massives fortunately), deal with aether clouds, and untangle snarls of children who had reached the point of dropping in their tracks. Most of the work for the Setari was in preventing drift off the back of the pack, and more than a few of them had to divide their time between fighting and carrying some of the remaining smaller ones.

I had one of those, and a flower, a tiny deep purple daisy, bruised and wilted but still jauntily floral, presented to me with great solemnity by a girl of four or five about twenty minutes after we’d started out. I think it had taken her that long to work her way to the front where I was walking behind Korinal and Maze. She was a very pretty girl, her hair in a long, thick black braid, and her eyes were confident not frightened when she held the flower up to me. After I’d accepted it, she lifted her arms up. A very imperious little creature, the demand to be carried totally clear.

Since she was white with exhaustion, I couldn’t not do it, though my cousins long ago taught me that kids are fun to carry for about five minutes and then they’re wriggly little torture devices. Kaoren looked at me, then past me to two other kids, a curly-haired boy and a short-haired girl both around twelve years old, who were giving me basilisk glares as the girl wrapped her arms around me, sighed once, and fell immediately asleep.

"Your sister?" I asked.

They didn’t answer, instead glancing at each other as if deciding on a way to rescue the girl. I figured that Tarens have a pretty bad rep with Nurans, which is going to make this whole mess even more complex.

Kaoren just said: "It will be easier if you adjust your suit into a harness," and I experimented with this for a while, keeping an eye on the worried reaction of the two twelve year-olds to black suit-goop suddenly oozing over their sister. I was also keeping an eye on Kaoren. Walking through deep-space wasn’t easy on him – I could see that he was having trouble blocking his own Sights while remaining on alert for attack. I managed okay carrying the girl – the harness helped a lot and she slept limply collapsed. Not that I didn’t deposit her in the first dry patch of grass I could find once we were through the rift gate, leaving her to her close-mouthed siblings.

Getting through the gate was a challenge in itself. Third went ahead with all the available Wind talents, who worked up a gale to blow it free of aether while Third searched real-space for predators. But there was just a meadow studded with rocks, and goats, the whole thing slushy with snow melt. It quickly turned to mud as an endless stream of Nurans flooded out across it.

That became complicated, because the kids would rush through the rift gate, blink at all the sunlight and sky and grass and goats, and promptly sit down. After the first few mass tangles, all the Telekinetics and Levitation talents began picking up batches and flying them a short way across the meadow. The other Setari set up a loose perimeter, while the goats sensibly ran away. Then we waited.

Tare sent every available ship as soon as the Chune brought word, but even though some of these were larger than the Litara, it was hours later, approaching sunset at the rift and well into evening at Pandora, before the last ship was loaded. Most of the Setari remained until the final flight so that, if a Ddura showed up, they had the option of taking everyone still there back through the Rift.

During the long wait the Captains had plenty of opportunity to work down the list of Things We Wanted To Ask Nurans. As soon as everyone was safely through, and the guards sent out, we all gathered around a trio of the Nuran Setari (for they are, apparently, Nuri’s version of Setari) on a high pile of rocks with a good view of the meadow. The Captains were streaming the conversation back to Pandora, and to their squads, while clumps of Nurans – mostly teens – gathered in a circle below us to listen, even though we were speaking in Taren. The one called Korinal, my watcher from back on Tare, was designated spokeswoman since she could speak the Taren dialect, though with a very strong accent.

"We have not been unaware of developments on your world," Korinal began, and didn’t sound like she was going to go into just how they knew. "As you ventured into the Ena, we saw an increase in the number of Ionoth, and there was much debate as to whether the change was linked, and what damage you might cause. This anxiety only increased when it was reported that you had gained access to Muina, and the reports made it clear that you had done so through a touchstone."

"What does Nuri know of touchstones?" Maze asked. "And of Gaia, for that matter. Tare and Kolar retained no information of either."

"Of Gaia we know only that the path to it had been lost, but that it was once deeply tied to Muina. Of touchstones…" Korinal turned her head and gave me a long look. A really strange look, as if I was something wondrous but deadly, which fascinated and repelled.

Okay, yeah, that’s probably reading a little too much into it, but she did stare at me for an uncomfortably long time, and made me glad that Kaoren was at my side.

"It is rare for a touchstone to exist," Korinal went on. "One born with a profound link to the Ena, a focus connecting all that is to all that once was and all that could be."

"That is–" Maze began, and stopped. Which was his polite Maze-ish way of going: "Wut?"

"You have been experimenting with the abilities of the child of Gaia, have seen that this connection can, in a limited way, be used to create objects, even small spaces. And you have seen that the great devices on Muina draw upon the aether. You have not understood the potential of a device powered by aether, and a touchstone."

Machine component. As job descriptions go, that one is probably the worst so far.

"In truth, we barely understand it ourselves," Korinal went on. "The device makers died with the Shattering, and we retained little of their craft. But it is known that a touchstone existed at the time of the Shattering, and we believe that touchstone was used to create the Ddura." Korinal glanced back at me, expression closed, evaluating. "Among my people, there are those who believe that that touchstone was responsible for the Shattering."

Kaoren slid his hand into mine, though my reaction was delayed trying to unravel her accent. Once I understood, I immediately wanted to change the subject, so I said: "What are the Cruzatch?"

"That we do not know," Korinal said. "We have encountered the Ionoth known to you as Cruzatch in two separate spaces, and also as travellers. The behaviour of those generated by spaces is distinctly different to those which travel through the Ena. We suspect that the Cruzatch linked to spaces are memory-imprints of the travellers, while the travellers–" She paused. "There are a number of theories, but it appears that the traveller Cruzatch are active in real-space, possibly on multiple worlds."

"Active how?" asked Raiten Shaf, moving a little closer. The Kolaren squads had followed the Taren squads' lead during the battle, but as Senior Captain of the Kolaren Setari, Shaf had been biting his lip holding back questions. "Were they active on Nuri?"

"That – my senior, Inisar, spoke of them when he released us, but there was no time, and I could not–" Korinal paused, and I could almost see her push back what had to be overwhelming horror and shock, struggling to regain the detached tone she’d been using. "If they were, we did not suspect it until this day," she went on. "But for some time Inisar and others among us have been trying to unravel strange dealings on Nuri. Our people have been fractured by differing opinions about the strain within the Ena, and underlying that has been a strong sense of deceit. We thought it political, a struggle between the two with the greatest chance of succeeding to the leading House of Nuri, and when word of the touchstone on Tare arrived that impression strengthened. The urgency of the command to retrieve the touchstone, and Inisar’s return empty-handed, brought many arguments. Inisar was sent again, this time only to observe, and did not return."

"So you were sent," Kaoren said. "And yet, there was some aspect of constraint."

Korinal nodded. "A Command. Created by a device of the Lantar brought from Muina during the evacuation and formerly rarely used. To place one under Command indicates a lack of faith, a cause for distrust. We were told that the divisions of opinion made it necessary, but it was a grave insult."

She stopped speaking, looking past Maze at the field of Nurans: those watching and listening, and those clumped in sleeping piles, curled on grassy tufts, tucked against tumbled stone.

"We did not look hard enough, allowed ourselves to be distracted by immediate concerns, even when among our own ranks there were those whose behaviour would have required investigation in less difficult times. Constraint. Yes, that is a word for it. Perhaps they, too, were under a Command. I returned to Nuri when it became obvious the child of Gaia had been removed to Muina, and found my people hard-pressed by Ionoth. And then the Dazenti – a type of Ionoth which has periodically plagued us in recent years: small, swift-moving, attacking in swarms, and capable of phasing so that even walls could not keep them out. The swarms have been growing more frequent, of ever-greater numbers, and though we were equal to tracking and dealing with them, the number of deaths among those we protect had become so excessive that it was necessary to create shelters. When the alert was given, all not capable of defending themselves evacuated to the shelters, and the walls charged with a shielding we had only recently discovered–"

She broke off, because half her Setari audience had reacted: a scatter of quickly-controlled movement and murmurs.

Maze, a muscle jumping in his cheek, said: "What you describe seems to resemble a place we found on Muina: an underground installation, the walls shielded, and many people trapped within, who died suddenly."

Nuri’s spy system plainly hadn’t passed on details about Arenrhon to Korinal. Her head went up and back, confusion plain, and she looked away from Maze, staring again at the clumps of children all around us.

"Were there large stones in their depths?" Taarel asked. "Dark green, smooth, perhaps two persons' height in diameter?"

"The shield generators," Korinal said, exchanging a glance with her two fellow sword-wielders.

"The Cruzatch use the stones as gates," Taarel explained. "We have found two on Muina thus far, and do not know whether the Cruzatch were involved in their origin, or merely take advantage of them."

Korinal, after a long moment, simply went on with her story. She doesn’t seem to be a type who likes to speculate.

"A swarm warning was called this morning in First Home, our oldest and largest city, during the preparations for the yearly March of Dawn. We oversaw – our first duty is to protect the evacuees into the shelters, and then we hunt, clearing all the Dazenti. But Timon, one of our own, he–" She paused. "I will hope he was under a Command. I prefer that to thinking he betrayed us. He lured us into the smallest of the shelters, claimed it was breached. And sealed it."

She let out her breath, as if she had passed some hurdle she had dreaded. "It is not possible to teleport through the shield, and we could not reach the generator. But then there was Inisar. He was burnt, starved. Filthy. But he was outside the shield, able to activate the release we use when the swarms are over. He ordered us to open all the shelters, to get everyone as far as possible away from them. He said they were a trap.

"We had barely begun – only a handful of shelters were open when we found the releases wouldn’t respond. There was a rising, overwhelming, sense of danger, and we concentrated on racing those in the open shelters to the surface."

"And then the end," said one of the other Nurans. "The death of Nuri." He was speaking in his own dialect, but it wasn’t too hard to work out.

"The shelters exploded," Korinal continued, her voice thin. "All who were in them – there could be no hope. But it did not stop there. The sense of danger only increased, and the explosions did not cease. Stronger, deeper. We could see the far reaches of the city…vanish, dropping downward. The rift was the only place to go, and only those from the nearest of the shelters had any hope of reaching it. We sent them running, carried who we could. The ground began to open – we lost hundreds within a stone’s throw of the rift – they were still pouring through and I was one of those just within trying to keep the movement flowing when it all – when – no more came through."

Someone was crying, down below, and luckily a new ship arrived to distract us all from thinking about what happened on the far side of Nuri’s rift gate, to all those running people. I’ve never been so close to so much loss, and felt inadequate and overwhelmed, and was glad when Maze only asked a few more questions after the ship was loaded.

The explanation for most of the survivors being kids turned out to be the ceremony I’d seen at Kalasa. It’s called the March of Dawn, where all the children of the city carry flowers to symbolise the new year’s blessing. The Nurans hold a form of the ceremony on the anniversary of their arrival on Nuri, and they’d just been preparing to march when they’d been sent to the shelters. Korinal didn’t know if the timing was deliberate, or if there’d been any purpose in having all the children gathered in one place.

I keep picturing a trail of crushed flowers through deep-space.

When the captains had run out of immediate questions for Korinal, I asked Kaoren to take me to find Lohn, who I felt a great need to hug. Mara had been treated in plenty of time, but the wounds were deep and her arm’s badly broken and if she’d been a fraction slower the swoop would have had her neck.

Lohn was so upset. Everyone is, shocked and jumpy and made small by an event so large, but Lohn’s fear for Mara was something I felt more equal to approaching. He didn’t say much at all, but he half broke my ribs squeezing me back, and Kaoren and I stayed with him being perimeter patrol as ship after ship came and left, until the Litara finally returned from Pandora to gather up everyone who remained. I was tired out by then, and dozed off sitting beside my favourite seat in the packed common room where most of the Setari had gathered, only to be woken by my flower-giver climbing into my lap.

She latched her arms around my neck, and it was the weirdest sensation because she was shaking as she hid her face against my throat. Not sure if she’d had a nightmare, or was just reacting to the day’s horrors, I looked about for her two shadows and found them coming into the common room. That gave me another strange jolt, because the pair – who had been so silently possessive of the younger child and spent most of the walk through deep-space glaring at me when they thought I wasn’t looking – were barely recognisable. Eyes down, faces blank, hands and shoulders held so that – it’s hard to describe it – like they were trying to be completely nothing.

They were followed by a boy a year or two their elder, half-heartedly herding them and looking like he wished he was anywhere else. And bringing up the rear, one of the adult Nurans, a plumply pretty woman who looked about anxiously, then said something sharp and soft to the two kids in front.

I was on my feet so quickly I might as well have levitated, despite the not-inconsiderable weight latched around my neck. In another second I might well have teleported across the room. I never thought the way someone was standing could have such an effect on me.

Fortunately the woman spotted me, took one look, and simply turned and walked away, quickly followed by the unhappy older boy. And the younger boy and girl became people again, heads coming up, shoulders straightening. They didn’t exactly look pleased to see me holding the younger girl, but they picked their way across the room without hesitation, and my new neck ornament let go and clutched them instead.

Kaoren, and the conscious parts of First and Fourth, had watched this mini-drama in silence, and shifted so the little trio had a corner to tuck themselves in, where they promptly pretended to be asleep. But the interface means you can always talk about someone right in front of them, with no worries about them overhearing.

"Pandora is about to become extremely…complicated," Lohn said, in the channel we made.

"There is a great deal we do not know about Nuri," Maze agreed, and added to me: "We’ll flag this trio for a higher level of monitoring. Although–" He paused, then said to Lohn. "Complicated is an understatement. It was a struggle to get Kolar to accept the interface. Nuri…traumatised Nuran children…that’s not an issue we can force."

KOTIS' well-oiled colonisation plan has gone out the window. "Was that woman related to them?" I asked Kaoren.

"I don’t believe so," Kaoren said. "Since we are likely to be hosting most of this last ship-load in the Setari facilities, we’ll have a day or more to establish some form of oversight, even without the interface."

He was right about that. There weren’t nearly enough completed buildings at Pandora to house over eight thousand Nurans, even squeezed in together, and all the Setari ended up with guests on their couches. Given KOTIS' usual efficiency, it’ll only be a day or so before they bring in fittings for some of the scads of windowless buildings waiting to be completed.

The language barrier isn’t too bad. None of the flower girl’s trio has said a word to us – or to each other that I’ve heard – but they follow instructions quickly enough to show that they’re catching the meaning when we speak Taren. While Kaoren was fetching food, I showed them all how to use the bathroom, and Kaoren and I gave them (terribly oversized) clothes to change into and after they’d eaten settled them on our couch for the night. Three of eight thousand orphans.

We left our bedroom door open in case they panicked in the night, and when I woke around dawn, hours before anyone else seems inclined to get up, both Kaoren and the flower girl were sleeping on top of me. I had to wriggle out from beneath them for some quality time with my diary.

I don’t know what to do about her. Why does she keep coming to find me?

She’s sweet, in an imperious little princess kind of way, but the most I can do is make sure that she’s "flagged for monitoring". With my hospitalisation rate, it would be stupid to try and keep some kind of connection with her, or her frowny sister and brother.

Assimilation

When Kaoren woke this morning, yesterday caught up with us in a big way, and we locked ourselves in the bathroom for an extra-long while. Kaoren is struggling with all that his Sights are battering him with, and I don’t even want to think, let alone talk about the suggestion that it was a touchstone who was responsible for the disaster on Muina.

Three pairs of eyes greeted us when we emerged: one curious, one embarrassed, and one scornful, but at least we were primly dressed in our nanosuits. And then my flower girl presented herself, arms uplifted commandingly. I had to laugh.

"Sweetheart, you’re going have to tell me your name if you want me carry you about all the time," I said, picking her up obediently.

"What sweetart?" she asked, wriggling about to see my face.

I still drop the occasional English word into speech unconsciously, so translated, pleased to have proof she was capable of speaking, though her shadows reacted with stifled shock and displeasure.

Kaoren handed each of the shadows a mug of juice, and stood considering them. "Not siblings," he said. Which was news to me. All three of them – like the majority of Tarens and Nurans – had black hair and brown-black eyes and though they were by no means identical it hadn’t occurred to me that they weren’t family, since they so obviously came as a set.

"Ys and Rye," my flower girl said helpfully.

"And you?"

"Sweehart?"

"Sentarestel." The boy said it, pink and unhappy. He’s proving more a blusher than a glarer.

"Someone got all the syllables. I call you Sen, okay? Name of girl in one of my favourite ever stories. You three can call me Cass." I put Sen down on the couch, and noticed the girl (Ys) immediately helped steady the mug of juice Kaoren handed the younger girl. Relative or not, she was very used to playing Sen’s minder.

I was debating little speeches to make to them when I heard a familiar "Hhhiiiiii" and stiffened. "Ddura is hunting," I told Kaoren urgently.

He immediately started speaking to someone over the interface, while those three pairs of eyes watched us curiously, widening in astonishment when Ghost came tearing out of nowhere and leapt into my arms. I’m relieved about that in retrospect – I’d forgotten I’d left her on the Litara.

"Not Ghost it’s hunting," I said, feeling sick when the cry continued. "They missed someone security clearance." But just then the Ddura made the query noise, then stopped. "Gone."

"Signalled to a different platform. Someone will be posted to keep calling it there, but you need to report immediately if you hear it again." He gave Ys, Rye and Sen another evaluating look. "There will be a general assembly of all of Nuri at the middle of the day. Until then, you will stay with the group in this building. Do you understand?" All three of them nodded, though I won’t guarantee they had more than a vague idea of what he’d told them.

After they’d dressed, we took them down to the common room, where a communal breakfast had been arranged, and asked two of the Setari who were helping out to keep a special eye on them since Kaoren and I had to go off to a meeting of the senior bluesuits.

It was a big meeting – not just bluesuits, but Isten Notra, the senior Taren and Kolaren Setari, and all nine of the surviving Nuran Setari, along with a half-dozen Nuran adults who had been suggested as representatives. We met in the fancy hotel, and the first person I saw was Inisar – obviously ill, but rested and clean and dressed in what looked like part of a greensuit uniform. I was very glad to have it confirmed that he was alive, and he gave me one of his ultra-formal nods in response to my relieved smile.

It was a breakfast meeting, and Tsaile Staben had everyone collect food from a buffet arrangement, then gave a short speech about what KOTIS had been doing on Muina in terms of settling and trying to uncover a solution for the tearing spaces. Korinal translated this for the Nurans, and I got enough of the gist of what she was saying to be fairly relaxed about talking to Nurans without a translator – it’s not as if every word of Nuran is completely different to the Taren version, though there’s going to be a lot of guesswork for a while.

After that, Tsaile Staben introduced her side of the table very briefly (including me as "Caszandra Devlin of the world known as Urth or Gaia) and Korinal introduced the Nuran side of the table. Two of the Nuran representatives were landholders (so far as I could tell this is a particular type of moderately wealthy farmer), one was a scholar, one a smith, one a cook and one what I’d call a (very young) priestess if Muinan planet-reverence used the word.

There probably wasn’t a single one among them who hadn’t lost almost everyone and everything they cared about, but only their red-rimmed eyes gave it away as they listened intently.

After introductions, Tsaile Staben said: "Both Tare and Kolar are of course willing to aid you as much as possible. But it is from you we need to know which direction to take. We need a decision, for your people, whether to remain as a group on Muina and become part of the colony at Pandora, or to be sent to Tare and Kolar to be housed with host families."

That got an immediate and very definite answer: Muina was their home world and it would now be their home, and there could be no question of splitting up the survivors of Nuri between other worlds. But one of the landholders, equally as definitely, objected to the idea of Pandora.

He wasn’t nasty about it – he actually came across as one of the nicest people there – but he spoke really eloquently about the differences between the Nuran and Taren/Kolaren ways of life, and how becoming part of the Taren/Kolaren settlement would mean abandoning being Nuran, as well as risking becoming a lesser, subservient underclass. That though they would be grateful, of course, for temporary shelter, the best thing for them to do was choose a relatively safe part of Muina and create a settlement of their own.

Even though I don’t think the bluesuits liked the idea of a Nuran-only settlement at all, Tsaile Staben simply nodded and asked the other representatives if they agreed. And it was clear all the Nurans were far from keen on living with Tarens, and wanted nothing more than to go somewhere Tarens weren’t. But the idea fell in a heap when they even began to think over the practicalities of eight thousand children and six hundred adults trying to build a settlement, no matter how much outside assistance they received.

The cook, a woman named Eran, let the others talk back and forth, then summed it up by saying: "No matter what we want, how fair is it on them? Even if we treated the oldest as adults, we would be raising ten youngsters each. And they would be the ones doing most of the work." Then, after Korinal had translated, she turned to Inisar and said she wanted the Setari’s view.

Inisar’s voice was still really ragged, making it obvious why Korinal had been doing all the talking for the Nuran Setari. But croakiness didn’t undercut the power of his words: "We are at war."

Korinal took over, very briefly pointing out that both the increasing fracturing of the spaces and the machinations of the Cruzatch were active threats which could not be ignored. That whatever decision the people of Nuri made, all the Nuran Setari’s energies must go into fixing the bigger problem. And that while they might settle at a platform town with the protection of the Ddura, Ionoth were far from the only dangers a Nuran settlement would face on Muina. Even the landholder who had initially objected had to concede when the cook added that it was better to try to retain some sense of identity as part of Pandora, to contribute to what kind of people would be known as Muinan, than to be dead.

Once the representatives had made a unanimous decision to stay at Pandora, Tsaile Staben moved on to the question of leadership, and whether the rest of the Nurans would accept further decisions made on their behalf by the representatives in the room, or whether some kind of election needed to be facilitated, or if there was a person or group of people who leadership could be expected to devolve to. This was another twisty question for them to answer. Nuri had a ruling class, but most of them were dead. Of the representatives only the scholar and the priestess were these elite Zarath, and neither of them had been close to actual leadership. A small percentage of the children were Zarath and while there were no members of Nuri’s last ruler’s immediate family, there were a handful who would debatably be next in line for the throne – though they hadn’t had a chance to work out exactly who was among the survivors.

But, even though everyone who had reached Muina had been together in the same shelters, it was clear that now the initial shock was passing there was a lot of anger growing about who on Nuri had been working with the Cruzatch. The representatives very much doubted that a Zarath-dominated leadership would be accepted.

"There is only one who I know all would follow," said the cook, again cutting short the debate. "Because we have followed him already, to keep our lives." She bent her head briefly in Inisar’s direction.

"No."

Inisar’s very good at being absolute. The most they could budge him was that he would advise the council when necessary, and eventually the council decided to temporarily keep the current group as representatives, until some form of election could be held.

That settled, Tsaile Staben moved on to the agenda for the rest of the day: first to gather all the Nurans in Moon Piazza, announce the provisional representatives, and have them explain the decision to stay at Pandora. Once that was done, the Nurans would be grouped into temporary residences, distributing the adults first, so that every apartment had at least one adult. And their ten kids.

Everyone needed to be shuffled for a second time through the platform room to try to ensure the whole group had security passes. There would be information sessions on screens set up at different parts of Moon Piazza to give Korinal-translated statements of what had happened on Nuri and what was going to happen over the next few weeks at Pandora. Supplies had been urgently sent from Kolar and would hopefully reach Pandora in time to be distributed, so that everyone would have a couple of changes of clothing, underwear, and things like hairbrushes. There would be very cursory health checks. Most importantly, names would be collected in the hopes of matching surviving family groups back together.

And that brought us to the big sticking point. When Tarens find strays (which I guess is kind of what the Nurans count as), they immunise them, put them on birth control and, unless they’re Kolaren, inject the interface. Birth control they weren’t going to worry about at the moment, but the immunisation had to be mandatory, which meant explaining what immunisation was. But it was the second needle which was going to divide Pandora in two.

It’s hard to live in a Taren building without the interface. You can use the bathrooms, fortunately, but you can’t even turn the lights on or off. Before the Tarens agreed to give the interface to settlers, the Kolarens had had to use handheld devices to do everything – respond to alerts, locate rooms, get through doors.

Tsaile Staben wanted the Nuran representatives' advice on how to best approach explaining the options – which in itself involved a great deal of explanation and you could see that even with a bunch of people selected for calm leadership qualities, none of them thought "a machine in your head" made any kind of sense.

It would make life infinitely easier for KOTIS to have the Nurans accept the interface, but I don’t think Tsaile Staben thought for a moment she could convince the representatives, let alone the rest of the Nurans. She just wanted to make option two – injecting an identity trace in one hand – seem like a bearable alternative. A barcode below the skin, so KOTIS could track where all the Nurans were.

Isten Notra, sitting next to me, stole Ghost from my lap and quietly played with her while the conversation went back and forth, and eventually said: "Perhaps Caszandra can share her experiences. Although her reaction to the expanded interface was asymptomatic, her introduction to it might give you a better idea of what to expect."

Given that the interface has nearly killed me twice, and I had thrown a temper tantrum over it, I didn’t consider myself at all the right spokesperson. The Nuran representatives looked at me doubtfully, and the cook asked apologetically to be reminded who I was (I was dressed as a Taren Setari, after all).

Inisar spoke up at that, his ragged voice cracking from the effort as he said: "Caszandra Devlin is the touchstone who made it possible for Muina’s children to return to this world, and the one who freed me. She is the reason you are alive, and here."

Even the other Setari looked shocked at that – I guess he hadn’t had a chance to explain how he got free. Tsur Selkie super-briefly explained about Sight Sight leading him to ask me to try to visualise Inisar, and the questioning of the projected version of Inisar (something which made Inisar’s eyes widen rather – he hadn’t known about that), and then me reaching out and breaking the real Inisar’s chains. And then Selkie noted that when I’d been first discovered on Muina no-one had known I was a touchstone and so I’d been processed as an ordinary stray and given the injection we were discussing.

It’s really hard not to hide under the table when people are staring at you like you have two heads.

"My language very different from Muinan," I said cautiously. "So I had not an explanation beforehand. Implanting the interface, they use a rounded metal tube pressed against my temple. It stung, and then was bad headache worse and worse over the next days. It tapered off after third day and then I start seeing things – the basic controls of interface."

I paused, considering how very unattractive that had all sounded, then pushed myself to say clearly: "Have you noticed how people here keep glance at that wall?" I gestured to my right, and saw that the Nuran Setari at least nodded. "That’s because the interface let us see map display there, show all of Muina, and track the ships come here from the rift. Is like an illusion only people using the interface can see. I can use the interface to talk someone on other side of planet, or read any book Tarens have ever written, or look at what goes on outside, or watch everyone fight that scratchy massive, to see if I miss anything. The interface monitors my heartbeat and sends alert if I’m hurt or ill, and I can use it to call for help if someone attacks me. You said before that you were worried that by staying here the Nurans would become underclass. If you stay here, and don’t use the interface, you guarantee that. It would be like – like not learning to speak."

I don’t think "it’s going to give you an awful headache" really sold them on the idea, but the representatives dutifully went off to talk about how to try to explain the choice to their people, and I had another meeting with just the Setari (and Isten Notra and Tsur Selkie). Tsur Selkie wanted to know everything which had happened to Inisar, who told his story via Korinal. I guess he can’t talk telepathically to groups of people.

Unfortunately he didn’t have a great deal to add. He’d reached Nuri, gone directly to report to Nuri’s leader, and was in some kind of waiting room when his Sights told him he was in danger. But before he could identify the source, or teleport away, he’d passed out. He thinks it was something in the air.

When he woke, he was chained to that wall, and someone called Torenaltelasker (one of the two likely heirs of Nuri) had questioned him several times about what Inisar had told me – using the Command device but still not believing the answers. The last time he’d been questioned, a Cruzatch had participated, burning Inisar but never speaking.

"There was communication between them," Inisar said, speaking directly. "Mind-to-mind. Torenaltelasker…fawned. Even without my Sights it was clear that he bent his pride not from fear or respect, but in pursuit of some gain."

Sadly, this Torenaltoomanysyllables hadn’t read the Villains' Handbook, and totally failed to gloat, or explain his evil plans, or let slip any clue about what the hell they were trying to achieve with their underground bunkers. Inisar couldn’t even guess whether the explosions were a sign that it all went wrong, or if that was meant to happen.

After that the Setari exchanged details of encounters with the Cruzatch, debating the idea that there were two different kinds of Cruzatch. No-one can decide if the Cruzatch are some kind of natural creatures with their own planet, or Muinans made into Ionoth – let alone why anyone would want to be made into a Cruzatch. All the Sight Sight talents – Tsur Selkie, Kaoren, Inisar, and a Nuran woman named Elemnar – say that the idea of the Cruzatch being former Muinans feels right, but wrong to them.

The current plan is for the Setari of all three worlds to try to track the Cruzatch’s home space – or at least one of the spaces which forms Cruzatch as memories, like the "Old West" one which had Cruzatch pinned on frames, or the space called "Columns". And if any Cruzatch are sighted anywhere, the Setari are going to try and capture one.

Inisar started looking exhausted again, so Tsur Selkie called a halt, and I went down to Moon Piazza with Maze and Kaoren to watch the mass processing and be part of a non-obvious cordon around the area to intercept any Nurans who tried to wander off. I brought my diary, and have been able to write all this and it’s still going. We’re sitting on the tiered gardens below the amphitheatre again, and the Nuran festival clothing has turned Pandora into a sea of cream and blue and violet. It looks like total chaos, but is apparently progressing to schedule. They’ve even managed to roughly outfit another of the big apartments, so the overflow won’t need to be crammed into the Setari building.

I’m not looking for my flower girl trio. Really.

Friday, August 22

Lord Vetinari

Yesterday, I’d finished writing up my diary when Nils and Keer from Second came to take Kaoren and Maze’s place in sitting about watching, since they had to go to a Captain’s meeting. Both Nils and Keer had basically landed on their faces when the massive fell, and were looking extremely disreputable. Nils had been unconscious for most of the day, which I’m glad I didn’t know about at the time. He’s got a broken cheekbone and arm, while Keer somehow managed to achieve a broken nose and leg. Since they’re Second’s Telekinesis and Levitation talents, they can only blame themselves for their fall, and were teasing each other in a comfortable kind of way when my flower girl came down from the tier above us, walked right between Nils and Keer, and climbed into my lap.

"Head hurt," she said, sounding very pitiable.

As much pleased as dismayed, I rescued the cloth bag of clothing and personal items she’d discarded in favour of sitting on me, and looked around to find her shadows still on the stairs from the amphitheatre (also carrying bags). They looked, as usual, cross and reluctant. Each had a faint pink mark on one temple.

"Did you three agree have interface install?" I asked, disbelieving. It had come as no surprise as the medical checks went on that the Nurans didn’t want anything to do with the interface. Even the identity trace had been a big point of contention.

"Ys, Rye want learn read," my flower girl said. She wriggled about in my lap, trying to get comfortable, then noticed Ghost in Nils' lap and held out her hands demandingly. Nils, looking very amused, handed Ghost over obediently, but Ghost doesn’t tolerate hasty introductions, and vanished.

"You can meet her properly another time," I told Sen, then introduced the three children to Nils and Keer, and motioned Ys and Rye to come sit closer.

Nils complimented Ys and Rye for braving the interface, and gave them sympathy in advance for the headache they were going to suffer, but as usual they completely ignored friendly overtures. Ys fixed me with the basilisk glare which is obviously her speciality, then I think elbowed Rye, since he started, then asked: "Why is there a statue of you and that other one here?[7]"

"Because I was first person come here since Muina abandoned," I said, struggling not to notice Nils' hugely entertained expression. "And Kaoren and Sonn were Tarens who found me. This place is commemoration of re-opening of Muina."

Again this was ignored, and the pair sat down cautiously on the bottom of the nearest stair, watching with close-mouthed resignation as Sen decided the beginning of her headache wasn’t as interesting as Nils and Keer’s injuries, and began inspecting them. Nils tolerated the bruise on his cheek being fingered, but must have asked someone else whether rogue children needed to be chased off, because the garden wall was abruptly made fuller by the addition of Kaoren, Tsur Selkie, Korinal and Inisar (obviously just up from a nap).

"Fiionarestel’s daughter," Korinal said, after a moment’s consideration of the self-willed imp giggling as Nils lifted her with Telekinesis so he could stand up. "Last of the strongest-Sighted House of all Nuri. This one was given to the care of Kimirenar after Fiionarestel fell to an attack some years ago." She glanced at Inisar, then nodded decisively at Tsur Selkie and Kaoren. "I agree. There is at least a double handful of children from strong lines who have survived, and who will need particular guidance whatever their chosen path. It would be dangerous not to collect and mentor them."

"Teaching methods can be discussed later," Selkie said, watching impassively as Sen retreated to attach herself to my leg. "An addition will be constructed on the Setari building to serve as quarters for children identified."

I was watching the two older kids, who had stood at Inisar and Korinal’s arrival and assumed the position – eyes down, arms held limply at their sides. Empty. But as Korinal spoke, the pose faltered, horrified eyes lifted and dropped, and though they managed to almost regain that blank expression, I could see them going white.

"We’ll use the apartment next to ours to house these three until the school is ready," Kaoren said, and I was so grateful to him for that, for having been perfectly aware that there were two kids there who mightn’t be from this strongest-Sighted family, but so clearly dreaded being separated from Sen, and hadn’t expected to be taken into consideration at all. Sen showed her approval by switching from clutching my leg to clutching Kaoren’s.

"This will bring many of the Zarath together in one place," Inisar said. "Protection should be arranged for any others until feeling is not so high."

They moved down the stairs, discussing whether to collect all the Zarath in a single location. Kaoren detached Sen and followed them, and I gave the older kids a reassuring smile. As soon as the Nuran Setari were gone they straightened up, still far from cheerful, but markedly different as Sen bounced up to them.

A pair of greensuits came trotting down the stair from the amphitheatre – having discovered three escapees from their group – but Nils obligingly intercepted them and then Kaoren came back.

"They’ve gone through all the processing," he said, scooping up Sen’s cloth bag. "Shall we walk?"

Waving goodbye to Nils, I opened a channel to Kaoren as we pointed the kids in the right direction.

"You guessed that she would find me again?"

He nodded. "Her Sights are driving her to you."

"But why? Does she know something about the Cruzatch?"

He gave me one of his fractional smiles. "I doubt it. All her energy appears focused on the two older children. In you I think she must see a way to elevate their status."

"She – what?"

"Inisar explained that names such as Ys and Rye would signify that they are not members of this Renar House – of the family – but instead belong to it. A kind of property."

Slaves. Or maybe what would be called bond-servants.

"It is likely Sentarestel’s care was their duty – that they are the ones who have been raising her. In return that child is absolutely determined not to be separated from them."

"And so she–" I stared at the three ahead of us and met Ys' eyes as she glanced suspiciously over her shoulder. And Sen looked back as well, thoroughly pleased with herself.

"Little Miss Machiavelli!" I said out loud. "You think you’re going to wrap me around your little finger do you?"

I spoke in English, but she obviously had no problem understanding the tone. And laughed, this utterly delighted little crow, then took the hands of the other two and skipped, showing no sign of her headachy crotchets. I had to wonder if it was even true that they wanted to learn to read, or if she’d just said that because it was like shooting an arrow to the heart of all I think right and proper.

"Were you like that at her age?" I asked, staring after them.

"No. Perhaps. Sight Sight is very clear in the early years, then becomes more difficult."

"And I was thinking about having children with you," I said, more than a little appalled, and he laughed in turn, which was really nice to hear. The past couple of days have been hard for him to handle.

"It will be difficult to deflect Sentarestel from you," he said. "But it is possible, particularly if we locate a stable family for the three of them, satisfying her primary aim. We need to decide soon whether we want that, to limit the uncertainty they’re experiencing."

He was looking ahead, one of his typical gazing-off-into-the-distance with Sight expressions, except this time his eyes were fixed on three kids. I am still learning so much about him.

"Are you saying you want to adopt them?"

"I am saying I intend to teach those two not to hold themselves as if they had no worth," Kaoren said, with all the distaste someone raised in a mostly-meritocracy could manage. "There are a number of ways we can approach that."

"But–" It was such a completely unexpected thing for him to want to do. Especially given the whole busy-saving-the-universe thing. Not to mention the huge dint it would put in our sex life.

There’s no way to make a decision like that in a moment, so instead I asked Kaoren why he thought they behaved so differently toward us.

"I suspect they class all non-Nurans as outside the hierarchy," he said. "You also told them your name was Cass, which matches the name form of the Houseless." He touched my arm reassuringly. "As I said, there are a number of ways to see about their future. The construction of the school gives us time to decide which one we prefer."

Of course, he would never have raised the idea at all if he hadn’t already worked out what he wanted. I still don’t know how to respond. Despite Sen being a cute little monster in the making, and how much I want to give Ys and Rye reasons to never stand like that again, I just can’t picture myself playing Mum. I’m eighteen! I have years of gallivanting and sleeping till midday to go yet! And I don’t see how we can work it, not when our lives aren’t really our own, and we have so little time to ourselves already.

Kaoren, being ever-efficient, had not only asked Sonn to move rooms before we managed to walk back to Setari quarters, he’d sent a technician to make a doorway from our lounge into the bedroom of the next apartment – something which only took about ten minutes to do. So now we have a bedroom for the kids and a bedroom for us and two lounges and bathrooms.

Along with being extremely suspicious of me, the interface injections and a long afternoon out in the sun meant the kids just wanted to lie down. Which, after Kaoren oversaw food and baths, left me free for an evening ping-ponging between thinking I’m a selfish bitch, resenting the hell out of Kaoren for suddenly deciding he wanted this, and wondering if he was doing this because I’d spent the afternoon fretfully trying to spot three faces in a crowd.

The problem is I think I want to do it. I just don’t know if I should.

This morning my head had stopped being on permanent spin-cycle long enough for me to decide I needed to talk to Mara, so while Kaoren took his squad out for some serious catch-up training, I dragged my three subdued charges to medical, where I knew there would be at least one spare greysuit in the Setari medical section who could check them over more thoroughly than the basic glance the medics were giving each Nuran yesterday.

Mara was sitting up, very frustrated at not being allowed to move about, and in the process of sending Lohn off to get a proper rest. Once I was sure she’d recovered enough to be bored, I explained as best I could about Ys, Rye and Sen.

"Do you think KOTIS Command would let us do?"

"It’s possible." She sounded dubious. "If the youngest truly is a strong Sight Sight talent, it makes a certain kind of sense. But – are you certain you’re not simply finding them a useful distraction?"

"Distract how?"

"I’ve listened to the explanation of what a touchstone is, and the suggestion that one was involved in the Breaking. Are you focusing on these children because it’s easier than examining that possibility?"

I went hot, then felt a little angry, and shook my head. "They’re definitely distracting, guess. But I would be just as tangled even if Korinal hadn’t said. And–" I shrugged uncomfortably. "I don’t particularly like idea being plugged into machine, and don’t want think about, but kids not help me cope with that any better. I just – I keep telling myself more sensible find someone else do this, but if I did, how could be sure they okay?"

She studied my expression, then made an equivocal gesture. "I don’t see an ideal choice here. Given the last few weeks, even sending them to Tare might not necessarily be a safe option. But you are far from a stable–"

We were interrupted by the greysuit – Ista Temen – who’d been examining the kids.

"Interface developing within normal guidelines," she said, crisply. "Generally healthy, with no immediate issues. Exceptional talent set for the younger girl, but only above-average potential for the others." She paused, looking mildly offended, then added: "The older two have scarring indicating repeated beating with some kind of cord. No sign of such treatment on the younger. I can schedule cosmetic work to remove the scarring, but there is a considerable backlog of procedures building."

I shook my head. "Only if they ask for," I said, and thanked Ista Temen for fitting the kids in, asking if I could at least use icepacks to help with their headaches – and you can, which makes me feel really ill-treated for my own interface ordeals.

"You weren’t surprised by that at all," Mara said when we were alone.

"They don’t trust anyone," I explained. "You haven’t seen how–" I stopped. I mightn’t have been surprised, but I found it hard all the same, and had to wipe at my face so it wouldn’t show when Ista Temen brought the kids. Mara reached out and squeezed my hand encouragingly. She clearly doesn’t think adopting Nuran orphans is a good idea, but she quite understands being upset about them.

The three wan children who filed into Mara’s little observation room had plainly enjoyed medical exams even less than I do, but even Ys could barely summon the energy to glare at me. Their interface headaches are shifting from background pain to major concern, and tomorrow is likely to be rough.

When I took them back upstairs they retreated into the second lounge room, to turn over the small selection of picture books and pencils which had been tucked in the bottom of the Kolaren care packages they’d been issued. They seem to be enjoying that, but also restless. I think I’ll see if we’re allowed out for a walk.

This Kimirenar isn’t among the names of Nurans rescued, but there may be other people from that House, and I feel like yelling, and hiding, and argh.

Saturday, August 23

Assemble family

Dreadful night. The kids' headaches had fully kicked in by dinner, their interface installation progressing faster than mine – apparently the older you are the longer it takes. Sen became incredibly clingy, wanting to be held all the time but also to be kept as still and dark as possible, and she wouldn’t stay resting anywhere but my lap. Ys and Rye, once they’d given up trying to coax Sen to stay with them, just lay limply on their bed, hurting too much to sleep but too exhausted to do anything but try.

Sen finally dropped off and Kaoren and I left her on our bed and sat together on our couch, half-heartedly debating one of us sleeping while the other sat up. I ended up reading some more of my diary to him over a private channel – describing past-me just recovered from her own headache and released from KOTIS – but there was a part coming up (about Sean J) which I didn’t want to read out, and I’m sure Kaoren sensed that I was all over the place still emotionally – tired, worried, and underneath it all feeling put-upon and resentful.

He took my hand while I was hesitating at the beginning of the next entry and said in-channel: "I was too efficient."

That was a seriously unusual thing for him to say – being efficient is one of Kaoren’s basic drives. "About?"

"These arrangements." He nodded at the doorway leading to the kids' bedroom. "I could see that you were reacting to them in much the same way as I, but I progressed through the tolerable responses before you did."

He has the funniest way of apologising, and I had to hug him. "Maybe just a bit. I certainly wouldn’t hold my hand up to adopt if someone ask. I just, I can’t stand idea of sending them off and not be sure they’re treated way I want them treated. So, I guess caught up with you. I don’t feel equal to be someone’s…parent, but that doesn’t mean don’t want to try. But I’m – something Mara said to me today, asking me if I was trying distract myself from what Korinal said about touchstones. I don’t think I am, but all that – I’m all over place because I do want to be involved, but how can I if so dangerous? Or so in danger?"

He didn’t answer right away, then lifted one hand, long fingers apart, giving me a chance to remind myself how much I like his hands. Then a curving spur of Light sprang out of his arm, making me jump.

"We’re all dangerous, Cassandra. And we’re all in danger. You are too strong to be paralysed by what might happen."

He looked like he was going to say more, but abruptly frowned at the darkened doorway into the kids' apartment. We got up to investigate, and found Ys and Rye in the bathroom piling their sheets and blanket into the bath. Ys had thrown up all over herself and the bed, and I hated, hated, hated how she and Rye went still and stood eyes fixed on their feet when we showed up. Waiting.

Kaoren, of course, just told them to leave the sheets and put Ys in the shower with the water nice and warm to wash the vomit off, then took Rye off to the other bathroom so he could use that shower, telling me he’d bring some clothes back. Ys was in bad shape, exhausted and scared and shaking. I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to her, so as soon as she was a little cleaner I got in the shower with her, sat down and pulled her onto my lap, ignoring her attempts to get free. She stopped poking her elbows into my ribs eventually and just leaned limply against my chest.

Kaoren came back and left some clothes (my lab rat nightshirt for Ys, heh), telling me that occasionally the interface install does cause nausea, but that it was usually a sign that it was coming to an end, and that he was going to get some clean sheets.

Rye had fallen asleep on the couch by the time I was done making sure Ys was properly clean and dry, and Kaoren had finished fixing the bed (fortunately it’s pretty impossible to soil a nanotech mattress), so we settled them both back in their room, and brought Sen in to join them. Kaoren and I sat on the side of the bed, and I held Ys' hand until she finally fell asleep. She was too tired to resent me for it.

I was totally wiped myself by the time I could curl up with Kaoren. Since he has circles under his eyes, I guess he only let himself have a few hours sleep, but the rest of us were out of it until nearly midday, when Sen woke us all up with the wonderful discovery of a floating dot in the centre of all the rooms. Since none of them can read (and Sen is so young) they’re going to have a very different learning curve with the interface, but it was fun to show them the room controls – Sen adores turning lights on and off – and after Kaoren and I brought them back from the medical section they spent the afternoon mesmerised by the wall display when I set it on random scenery and pictures.

Imagine an entire room as your first experience of television.

Tomorrow Kaoren and I have assignments scheduled, but he had with typical efficiency already cleared the initial hurdles with KOTIS Command – and even arranged babysitting – so after dinner we sat the kids down on the couch for Serious Talk time.

They made a curious set, all three wearing clothing sent from Kolar – shirts and long, loose pants of a light, off-white cotton. Sen was calmly cheerful, her thick hair neatly braided thanks to Ys. Ys on her left had barely bothered with her own short hair, and her jaw was set with a determination not to give anything away. Rye, just a fraction shorter than Ys, had tried but failed to tame his riot of curls, and kept lifting anxious eyes and then dropping them.

"Tomorrow Cassandra and I will both be away," Kaoren said. "We work for the organisation which is in charge of resettling Muina and dealing with Ionoth, and it is only on occasional days that we will not both be called away for part of the time. For the next few days, when we’re away you will be supervised by colleagues of ours, and after that the new school should be ready."

He gave them a moment’s study, then added: "We’ve seen how important it is to you three not to be separated, and in order to ensure that, Cassandra and I have asked permission to continue to care for you. You will attend the school while we work, but return to us when our work is done each day."

Rye’s response was the strongest, his head jerking up, eyes wide and disbelieving as he looked from Kaoren’s face to mine, and then he dropped them again and took a breath so deep he almost bounced in his seat. Ys, through sheer force of willpower, managed not to react, but looked across at Sen. She still hasn’t uttered a word in our presence and makes absolutely clear that she hates how Sen has attached herself to us, but she definitely wasn’t going to object to not being separated from Sen. And that self-same little imp was chirpily pleased at how easy it was to pull our strings.

My turn to speak, and I just wanted to hug all three, but knew not to overwhelm them. "Because we’ve listed this as your residence, doors will open to you," I said. "You can go outside on hill, or down into main room of building if you want, but don’t go away from building unaccompanied. When we’re away, if something happens that you need talk to us about, you can contact us using the interface."

I created a shared space which showed all the basic interface tools which were currently available to them, which at their stage were some very simple pictorial icons – one for school, one for games, and one for age-appropriate news and entertainment programs. Then I created some new icons for them – ones representing me, Kaoren, and each of the other children – which would change colour depending on our status (out of range, busy, not busy, asleep) – and had them try opening a channel to us and talking over the interface. It was too funny the way Rye jerked upright, mouth a perfect circle of astonishment, when Sen managed to talk to him in his head.

Kaoren took over again and gave the kids the same rules about multiple people touching me which all the Setari have to live with. This sparked a rare question from Rye, and I explained how First Squad had accidentally sent me into seizures and now there were all these rules about not touching me. Kaoren was very serious about this with Sen, since she’s so inclined to climb on me, and into bed with us – even though it’s the strength of Setari talents which seems to cause me the most problems, Kaoren feels it’s safer not to risk group contact.

So we’ve set up some ground rules for living together, and made clear that we have no intention of separating them, and the main thing we expect from all of them is to be kids, and become part of Muina’s settlement. That involves attending the school when it’s built, but for the moment they can set their own pace and explore the interface as they like.

Ys and Rye have done nothing but school lessons since. I guess Sen really meant it about them wanting to learn to read. Sen, while she tried the alphabet lessons, was far more interested in opening a channel to me roughly every ten minutes and collapsing into giggles when I answered.

I can look at their interface activity, since I count as a guardian, though I won’t be able to read their emails and voicemails and so forth, or listen in on personal conversations. I feel so utterly unprepared for this.

I can’t even remember reading any books about people being parents – kids always seem to be part of the happily ever after. I’ve read lots of books about kids without parents, or with parents who need to be avoided. All my favourite TV shows seem to have involved magical pregnancies which are over in a week and then the baby is an adult and trying to destroy the world. The only useful thing I can remember watching is Supernanny, and I’m not sure a Naughty Corner will get me far with Little Miss Sight Sight.

I’d love to know what Mum would make of me being engaged to get married AND fostering three children. I really want to ask her. Tomorrow I’m back on my schedule of visualisation testing, and I think I’ve waited more than long enough to try and visualise Earth.

Sunday, August 24

Behind the news

Tsur Selkie says I can try and visualise Earth during my next testing session, the day after tomorrow. Really excited about that, but trying not to get too worked up.

My visualisation session today was about Cruzatch, and was very unsuccessful. Tsur Selkie supervised me, and wanted me to visualise Cruzatch, particularly the Cruzatch’s home space. I wasn’t keen at all, and found it very difficult, eventually ending up visualising the space I’d gone to on rotation with First Squad, the Old West town with the Cruzatch on frames. That gave me an awful headache, and took a huge amount of energy. The problem, I think, was that it was a big outdoor space, and I tend to reproduce way too much when I’m visualising somewhere outdoors. And it made my eyes go all blurry, leaving me with another afternoon in medical, all headache and frustration while Kaoren was off with Fourth and Squad One trying to track Cruzatch through the spaces, but finding no sign of them at all.

Lying on the scan-bed with my eyes shut did give me an opportunity to catch up on all the news stories for the last few days. I browsed through them in chronological order, taking a little journey from delirious enthusiasm, teetering abruptly into The Sky Is Falling, and ending up deep into conspiracy theory.

The early stories have tons of stuff about me, of course – every journalist at the signing ceremony seemed to feel they had to give their impression of what I’m really like, regardless of whether they spoke to me or not. They mostly say I’m sweet, shy, cautious, but surprisingly articulate. So still suyul. Endless tedious stuff about how Kaoren and I looked together, and how he seemed more bodyguard than partner.

Someone had also interviewed the actors playing us in The Hidden War, which brought out the story of their impromptu picnic. They both described how mortified they were to discover how very unlike our portrayals we actually were, and how they’d asked me at the time what I thought about the Lastier character. I’d said: "You don’t play him as a Sight talent." Which is perfectly true, and which Kaoren thought very funny, but was perhaps not the strident defence of his good name I should have mounted.

There was one reasonably good impression of us, from someone who apparently spent the entire three days trying to get an interview with me and only catching glimpses of me as I was leaving. The article had a really great picture – one I like enough to keep – showing me and Kaoren through a doorway leading into the back part of the lecture-hall type place where we’d watched one of the presentations on screens so that the Kolarens could see it. We’d obviously just gone through the door, and I was smiling up at Kaoren in open relief while he said something to me, and he’d reached out to touch my hand or I’d reached out to touch his and our fingers were just brushing.

There were quite a few interesting articles about preparation for settlement, for a local currency, a stipend of basic essentials, a local wage system. There were also profiles on certain people who had already been approved as settlers – a couple of expert chefs from Kolar who are going to run one of the restaurants at Moon Piazza, three media technicians who are going to set up a local news service, a couple of high-profile craft-types itching to start making fancy furniture with all the wood which is being cleared aside on Muina – it’s such a rare and precious resource on both Tare and Kolar.

And then all the settlement stories are completely derailed by Nuri. I’d had no idea that the fact that Nuri had exploded had leaked before KOTIS had any real idea what was going on, leading to a near-riot in one section of Unara.

Things calmed down a little after Maze had forwarded a preliminary summation of Korinal’s story, emphasising that it wasn’t an attack which could be turned on us. Not that this really stopped anyone from being frightened, but the lack of shielded underground bunkers made the threat seem less immediate.

Reaction to the Nurans seems mostly sympathetic. KOTIS released some images of the refugees being threatened by the massive, and I read a nice story about how the little care packages were assembled – incredibly quickly – and though there’s been occasional suggestions that Nuri contributed to its own destruction, none of the stories I’ve read lose focus on the terrible betrayal and loss.

I feel bad for laughing at a story that said Muinan settlement "comes with free orphan!", but it’s true enough. Anyone wanting to settle here is going to have to be vetted on their potential as foster parents or willingness to adopt. Though, given how many hoops you have to jump through to get permission to have more than one child on Tare, I don’t think that’s going to be a big drawback with Taren settlers.

Once the medics had cleared me, I found my own orphans on the edge of the common room patio watching Nils – who had offered to look after them for the day – trying to write the Taren alphabet in the mud with a stick. He wasn’t doing too badly, and said he was using a tracing program in the interface to show him the best method of forming each letter.

After thanking Nils I took them upstairs for dinner, asking – in approved Mum fashion – how their day had been. Ys tightened her lips stubbornly. Rye blushed. And Sen told me, in glorious and partly comprehendible detail, all about watching the new school building goopily growing, and their walk to the lake’s edge, and the bee in the flower, and the little speckled fish in the water, and the duck, and the stick vegetables for lunch, and Nils flying them to the top of the Setari building, and the fake lady called Tsana Dura who wanted to play games in her head.

Tsana Dura still wants to play games in my head, too, though she’s morphed into a slightly different fake lady – sterner and less fluffy – as I’ve progressed through the school years. She shares her lessons with a fake man named Tsana Ridel, and Dura and Ridel are these incredible institutions to Tarens – the entire planet shares the same two automated teachers for basic lessons from kindergarten to the end of high school. They were apparently created by averaging the voices and appearances of a few million Tarens.

There’s tons of Dura-Ridel smutfic. Rule 34 never fails.

Monday, August 25

Denied

The Nurans held a memorial service today. Not just for their dead, but for their world, and all that they had built and created for a thousand years. All of Nuri’s plants and animals, all their books and art and instruments. I didn’t understand the speeches very well, but I felt the raw loss in the voices of those who spoke.

Ys, Rye and Sen, who I’ve come to realise haven’t been as upset as most of the Nurans because all their care is tied up with each other, were still very grave and quiet, and sat with me and Kaoren at the edge of the crowd. Even though I’m furious about Ys and Rye’s injuries, I don’t want to keep them away from Nurans generally – or let them isolate themselves, as I’m fairly sure they’d prefer to do. I’m not sure if the talent school is the best way to go about it, though.

For the moment my parenting efforts have mainly involved keeping Sen occupied so Ys and Rye can learn to their heart’s content. They’ve been attacking learning to read with such grim determination that I’d been starting to worry I’d have to put some limits on their lessons, but they stayed off the interface for the service, and took a break afterwards, distracted by the paper planes I was making for Sen.

I’ve still yet to see either of them smile or laugh, but it was the most relaxed they’ve been with me, totally absorbed by the mechanics of paper airplanes, and reproducing the other origami shapes I created for them. They’re tremendously interested in everything, but seem to consider it vital not to show it. Kaoren says they’re approaching learning like a starving man gorging himself on food: racing to swallow everything before it’s taken away.

Late this afternoon I took the flower Sen had given me, all limp and flopping, and gave it to Islen Dola over at Botany. He was very pleased, and said that even though the seeds weren’t fully matured, there was more than enough genetic material to reproduce it. So one more tiny bit of Nuri will survive.

We ate dinner down in the common room this evening, with Sen wandering about charming everyone within reach, and Ys and Rye sitting together enduring being looked at by Setari from three worlds. Since Setari do training with Kalrani, it’s not as if they’re not all used to dealing with children, but playing foster parent is an entirely different matter, and of course Fourth Squad don’t know what to make of the whole thing.

Even with so many orphans needing care, I doubt the kids would be allowed here if it wasn’t for the combination of the rarity of Sen’s Sight, which Kaoren is one of the few people ideal to nurture, and my involvement. I sometimes imagine the conversations KOTIS Command has about me. I’m mostly shielded from my own uniqueness by the Setari, who treat me with more pragmatism than deference, but I’m well aware that I could trade on my own importance to get an awful lot of things. And that as often as not it doesn’t even have to occur to me to try, because KOTIS now watches me very closely and tries to make sure I don’t even have a chance to get unhappy.

Today I’m glad of that, and I mean to take advantage of it.

Friday, August 29

Over There

Having to do a bit of catch-up.

Tsur Selkie’s been conducting my visualisation sessions, usually with Zee along, and a couple of other people for guarding purposes. Kaoren usually isn’t involved, but came for my attempt to visualise Earth, mainly because he correctly expected me to be upset. Lohn and Maze were along as guards, and two Nuran observers as well, Korinal and Inisar. Inisar’s recovering steadily – although his burns were painful, his main health issues were due to being chained to a wall and not fed much. He’s still not close to fighting fit – or even good brisk walk fit – but he was able to come and watch me having family moments.

And he was wearing a Taren Setari nanoliquid uniform, which was highly disconcerting, but the best thing to ensure he stays warm in the Ena. All of the Nuran Setari are going to have the interface installed, even though they all seem to share Inisar’s opinion that it’s a "distortion". I find that fascinating – they think it will make them less human, but they’re going to have it installed anyway because they know it will make them more effective in combating the Cruzatch. Like someone drinking demon blood so they can fight monsters.

They’re taking turns to have it installed so they won’t all be out of commission at the same time.

The Nurans were there because they want to observe me being a touchstone, but it was an awkward audience for me while all keyed up and emotional about the possibility of seeing my family. I’d had a lot of trouble sleeping, too, and been fretting all morning while Kaoren was off on another Cruzatch-hunt with Fourth and combined First-Second. I’d nominated a particular time for the session, to coincide with 7.00 pm Sydney time (hoping I was right about it not currently being daylight savings time) because at 7.00 Mum usually kicks Jules off the X-Box and watches the news.

Even though Earth is the furthest I’ve attempted to look, it was one of the easiest visualisations I’ve ever done. What could be easier than my own living room? Mum’s not exactly into redecorating, either, so the most it changes is more books, different games, and whether she has the ironing board out. She was exactly where I was expecting her, barefoot and dressed in her usual semi-casual work clothes. Jules was a bit of a shock – he’s jumped at least three inches in height and gone all gangly. Thirteen’s obviously his year for Dad’s stork genes to activate.

It took a moment after me opening my eyes for them to react, to notice that more than half a dozen people had appeared in the living room (or, in a couple of cases, in the kitchen – where most of the audience partially retreated). Mum seemed to see only me at first, and then was off the couch and squeezing me to death. I started crying, of course, even though I knew it wasn’t really Mum, but a projection of Mum, and when she said: "You’re home, you’re home" over and over I had to try and explain what was really going on. It’s pretty hard to tell something that looks just like your Mum that she’s really just a psychic version of a holodeck projection of your Mum.

Fake-Mum, after a moment’s shock, thought that was really interesting – which kind of says everything about my family – and then asked me why one of my eyes was a different colour. Jules was busy ogling Kaoren and telling him to make the cool sword come out of his arm again, a demand which Kaoren’s Symbol Sight didn’t seem equal to translating, so I told Jules I could do that too and made a spike for him, but then introduced Kaoren to fake-Mum and explained that we were engaged and getting married in about a year and a half and that I would try to visit properly but didn’t know if it would be possible.

Mum’s reaction made me laugh, and I told Kaoren: "Mum says that if she was real she would congratulate us and welcome you to the family, but thinks that should be saved for when she really gets to see me again and instead will give you several pointed hints about find a way for me to visit Earth." Kaoren said he’d try, and then gave me a warning about my energy use, but I gave myself a free extension by expanding my senses – finding it marvellously easy. It made me feel a lot less like passing out, but also infinitely less focused.

I told fake-Mum I didn’t have a lot of time, but had a bunch of questions. First, how did I go with my exams?[8] She didn’t know – she hadn’t opened the letter, but sent Jules to get it for me. Second, what did aether and touchstone mean on Earth? Fake-Mum more or less knew the answers, but since she had her laptop, she googled the words for me. It’s so weird that she was able to do it, and it really hit me in terms of energy cost, but now I know that a touchstone was a piece of rock used to test the quality of metal, which doesn’t match me at all, and that aether meant pretty much what I thought it meant. Next thing I wanted to know was how everyone in the family was. Mum said that Nick had gotten into the uni he wanted, and that I’d missed the Olympics. I was just going to ask what had been happening in my favourite shows and webcomics when a weirdness in my peripheral vision distracted me – and when I turned my head to focus on it properly it distracted me so completely that I dropped the visualisation altogether, fake-Mum and fake-Jules and fake-home fading away in a few seconds.

Kaoren moved forward, concerned, as I turned my head again to see whether my distraction would keep happening, and then I said "Streaming visual," and tried to show them what I was seeing.

There was this whole other world lurking out of the corner of my eye. If I kept up my expanded senses, and moved my head sharply, for a moment I could see it overlaid over Muina’s near-space. And yet, it was Muina, just a different version of it. The old town was still there, sprawled along the lake bank to the north, except much larger and grander and not ruined at all, and with this huge beam of light shooting up into the sky from where the amphitheatre is. And big statues of people, including one out in the lake with some kind of temple built around it, and these incredible crystal structures which were glowing with the last vestiges of sunset. No hint at all of Pandora, whose buildings are already well-formed in the area’s near-space. It was coming up to night-time in the other world, and lots of the windows were lit, and it looked very sumptuous and busy. We seemed to be sitting just outside one of the buildings, and I had a vague glimpse of a person just to my right walking into the building. Just an ordinary-looking person, dressed a bit like the Nurans.

I’m seriously glad that the interface was able to transmit what I was seeing, because I must have looked particularly weird getting all fascinated with my peripheral vision. The Nurans had to wait until we were back in real-space to be shown what I was seeing.

It was really really tiring trying to look at it, though, especially coming on top of my Earth visualisation, and I could only manage a half-dozen side-swiped glimpses before I started feeling grey and ill and Tsur Selkie ordered me to stop. And of course going back into real-space made my vision go totally nuts from blurriness. I’ve learned from past mistakes, though and kept my eyes shut, risking only the briefest squint. The headache from that was enough to send me to the infirmary for the rest of the day. I gather that they were worried that my interface was going to start growing again, because it was giving the equivalent of feedback.

It’s taken two days for my eyesight to stop being blurry, which has meant two days of being blindfolded. That’s not as impossibly inconvenient as it sounds, since they gave me a little portable scanner which I could wear like sunglasses to use to see instead. Totally weird seeing the world that way, because all the colours and my depth perception were ever so slightly different. It exacerbated my ever-present blurriness headache to use it for more than a couple of minutes, but at least it meant I could get to the bathroom.

Sen had a wonderful time playing ministering angel while I lay about feeling rotten and reading. It’s a little harder to tell what Ys and Rye made of it all, but they seemed to be in the background a lot making sure that Sen’s attempts to nurse me didn’t end up with me having mugs of juice tipped on my head.

I’m feeling a lot better today. The headache only properly went away when the blurriness did. They haven’t even begun to decide what, if anything, my peripheral world means and what they might want to do about it.

Aspiration

Kaoren seems to have cast a spell on the kids while I wasn’t paying attention. We went down to have lunch on the common room patio to celebrate me being able to see normally again, and while Ys and Rye are still all quiet and wary, they constantly look at Kaoren to check his reaction to everything. The rest of Fourth, who were the only ones about for lunch, watched with intense amusement and Mori told me later that it was only to be expected.

Mori and the rest of Fourth Squad are only just beginning to relax with me again. They never reacted really negatively, but for a long while stopped gossiping and sending me comments over the interface. There’ll always be a level of constraint, though, I think, but as much because of my increasingly weird position of touchstone as because of the idea of "Tsee Ruuel + snuggles".

Of course, Mori has an added level of complexity since she’s sleeping with the captain of Eighth Squad, who seems to be Kaoren’s closest friend. Mori was more than cheerful when Eighth (and Seventh and Squad Two from Kolar) arrived today, but from my point of view it wasn’t good timing. Exhaustion, headaches and children have meant a relatively chaste engagement, and I’m not in the mood to watch Forel purring over Kaoren. Even though I know he doesn’t want her to, I still can’t stand it when she puts her hands on him – while congratulating him on our engagement, no less.

I’m so going to ravish Kaoren when he gets back from his training run.

Kaoren’s given Ys and Rye a schedule of things they have to do other than lessons, and also set achievement expectations for their spelling tests. I think that might be what won them over. Not only allowing them to learn to read, and taking an interest, but requiring they do it well.

Going to ravish him a lot.

Stories

Kaoren ended up having to go off to a Captain’s meeting, and came back really tired and not a candidate for ravishment. I’d spotted the meeting being added (I’ve learned to keep an eye on his calendar), and so I managed to shrug off being disappointed about it. I don’t want our relationship to always be him supporting me and never the other way around, so I just gave him a foot rub and wasn’t surprised when he fell asleep almost immediately. He spent a lot of time with me when I was all headachy and trying to sleep, and so got to be headachy and unable to sleep as well. Except he didn’t get to spend all day in bed to make up for it. I’m going to have to revive the sleeping on the couch discussion.

I distracted myself waiting for him to come back by asking Mara for some recommendations for children’s books, and browsing through them to pick one to read. Kaoren had also set bedtimes for the kids, and to reinforce that with Sen (who is very difficult to keep in bed) I decided story time would be a good addition to the routine. I think that worked well, particularly since Ys and Rye could treat it as a continuation of their lessons. Not a bad story, either – it’s called Caves of Nonora, and is set back in the underground era on Tare, where a bunch of kids finds a huge hidden kingdom of blue people beneath their island. A chapter conveniently seems to be Sen’s staying-awake limit, putting her to sleep nicely, while Ys and Rye were totally fixated.

I’ve spent my whole life reading books. I vaguely remember Mum reading to me in our own bedtime sessions, and our house is practically a library. The way I think, the way I act, most of that’s because of the books I’ve read. Caves of Nonora is Ys, Rye and Sen’s first book and my voice was a little shaky reading it because I kept thinking about that, and about all the books which were important to me that I don’t have to read to them.

The talent school building is at habitable stage, and they’re going to move in children they’ve identified tomorrow morning, then hold an orientation session in the afternoon. It’s not going to be anything like so controlled an environment as the Setari school – the idea is not to turn them into Setari, it’s to make sure they have enough control of their talents to not accidentally set buildings alight – and if they have family their family will be living with them. The school will be connected to the Setari building through the medical section and kitchens, and is set further back from the lake, with its balconies looking mostly toward Pandora.

Since almost all of the Nurans have refused the interface, school is going to be a major part of Pandora for a while. KOTIS Command is hoping that eventually Tsana Dura and Tsana Ridel can take over, but until then it’s going to have to be face-to-face classes, which will take up a lot of resources.

I’m worried about the school, unsure how Ys and Rye will be received. At least, because they’re using the interface, Ys, Rye and Sen will attend only the physical and psychic classes, and will simply be supervised during the day while they do interface lessons.

Saturday, August 30

Away team

Fourth and Seventh were assigned to go Cruzatch-hunting in the Ena today. They started fairly late, well after lunch, but still aren’t back. I was trying not to be fretty about it, but knew they were officially overdue when Lohn and Mara showed up to sit with me. It was nice to see Mara out of medical, and I talked to them for a while, but I was just fretting too much and asked if they minded hanging about while I wrote. They’re watching a movie.

I’m climbing the walls, of course. Fortunately I didn’t start to get really worried until after story time was over – there’s no way I could hide the way I’m feeling from Sen. Ys and Rye are awake, but snug in bed lost in their virtual classroom.

This has been a day which began well, but slowly went downhill. Kaoren and I started out very happily making up for lost time, then having a fairly unresolved discussion on what to do when I’m sick to prevent him from having to suffer along with me. Neither of us wants to sleep in separate beds, but Kaoren said he’d think about a row of pillows in between us.

During the morning we had technicians in to reshape the kids' apartment so there’s three largish single beds and a bit more privacy for them, but keeping them still in the one room. It cost them a chunk of their lounge room, but I think it works out well this way. It was a bit hard to gauge Ys and Rye’s opinion of the changes, but Sen remains unreservedly positive about almost everything which we do.

This afternoon, though, after Kaoren had gone on his mission and we headed over to the talent school, Sen stopped being her usual chirrupy self. The identified children and their families had been brought over just after lunch and moved their sparse collection of belongings into their assigned rooms – the school apartments are similar to the Setari apartments, but with two or three bedrooms each. Then everyone gathered into a small lecture room, filling the rows of scoopy whitestone benches. There were more Nurans than I was expecting, about forty in all, a couple of them adults.

Nils, bruises fading, was playing my escort. I’m not altogether sure if I’m required to have a guard even in the talent school, or if he just tagged along out of curiosity. He seems to find the kids endlessly entertaining.

When we walked into the room there was a little flutter of suppressed reaction, but that was nothing to do with Ys, Sen or Rye and all about what I’ve started to think of as The Nils Effect. The squads are relatively used to him, but anywhere Nils goes – among civilians or KOTIS staff who don’t see him day to day – The Nils Effect produces a mass wave of Profound Awareness of Nils. Even wrapped up in Kaoren as I am, there were a few times today when my heart suddenly started racing because Nils had leaned forward, or brushed my arm, or done entirely innocuous things which triggered PAoN.

The pinksuit in charge of the school handled her PAoN very well – glancing at us as we came in, going an interesting shade of purple, then carrying on as if Nils wasn’t in the room. Except purple. We sat up back, with Ys and Rye between us and Sen between them, and all three were quiet and tense, not even paying attention to Ghost, curled in Nils' lap.

One of the Nuran Setari, a man called Serray, spoke first – all in Nuran, which I struggled to follow. But he was just explaining how this residence was different, that the primary focus was one of controlling their stronger talents. Some of the older children might already have received training within their houses (house seems to have been the major social structure on Nuri), but they would be given a review and further training to verify they had full control of their abilities. They weren’t being trained to be Setari, but skilled talents would be useful in many aspects of Muina’s development. Those family members who were here who did not have strong talents would also be offered talent training, if they so chose. All at the talent school, as with the rest of Nuri’s survivors, would be receiving language and skills training, to allow them to find a role in Muina’s settlement.

A girl down in the front row stood up then (this seems to be the Nuran equivalent of raising your hand) and when Serray looked at her, asked could they learn to be a Setari if they wanted to be. Serray (who doesn’t have quite the same gravitas as Inisar, but is still a commanding type of person) told her that it was not the current intention, and that Setari must begin their training at a very young age to truly attain that status.

The whole question of what a Setari really is and how inadequate the Taren and Kolaren version might be is something everyone’s danced around. Best I can tell, the Nurans approach the role of Setari from a spiritual viewpoint, and also start out with the focusing the connection to the Ena step which the Tarens and Kolarens skipped, and are now (so far without success) trying to relearn. The Nuran Setari don’t seem to think adults have much chance at all of learning how to do it.

The first part of talent school orientation was to divide the Nurans into age groups for their physical classes, and take them on a little tour of the facilities, and then they all had appointments for individual assessment.

Dividing into age groups was where we hit our sticking-point. Everyone was supposed to rearrange seats so that the youngest were in the first row, next oldest in the second, the third would be Ys and Rye’s age group, and the next the oldest of the kids and the adults. Sen latched on to Ys and Rye’s arms and wouldn’t go down and looked very much on the verge of a temper tantrum until Nils leaned over and whispered something in her ear. To my shock, after an uncertain look, she let go and obediently trotted down the stair.

As Ys and Rye followed, I asked Nils what he’d said, and he told me: "That she can’t protect them forever."

Sen plumped herself down in the front row and immediately turned around to watch, a miniature mother hen all fluffed up as Ys and Rye reluctantly moved forward.

Almost immediately a girl in their age group saw them and said loudly: "Lianzrenar, aren’t those servants from your house?"

I could only see the back of the head of the boy who turned to look at Ys and Rye, but I recognised him when he hunched his shoulders. It was the boy who’d been following Sen on the Litara.

"There are no servants here," he said, barely audible. I searched about for the woman he’d been with, but didn’t find her.

"Are they supposed to be exceptional talents?" the first girl asked. "Or are they in the wrong place?"

"Ys, Rye, mine," Sen said, in a loud, annoyed voice.

The boy called Lianzrenar mumbled an explanation I couldn’t properly hear and the (very annoying) girl who had started the fuss turned to Serray and the Taren pinksuit who was trying to clear up the confusion and said in an obnoxiously helpful voice: "They’re in the wrong place. Just servants set to watch Fiionarestel’s daughter, not family at all."

Of course, by this time I was down the stair, and dropped a hand on Ys and Rye’s shoulders. They were so tense, and had adopted "the pose": hands deceptively loose at their sides, eyes fixed on nothing. Posture designed for absolute neutrality, neither cowering nor aggressive. It made me so angry.

I could see the pinksuit didn’t need any explanations – I’m sure Ys and Rye’s files have big flags on them because of their connection to me. I looked at the annoying girl, reminding myself that the kid had just lost her entire planet, probably most if not all of her family, and had no doubt been raised to believe that people really could be just servants.

"Ys and Rye are here because they’re my wards," I said. "There’s no mistake."

The girl was disconcerted by this, but not ready to give up the fight, saying: "But–"

"You’re the person whose statue is in the parade ground," interrupted another girl, the one who had asked about becoming a Setari. The Nurans' ID trace injections will show name and location, and told me the second girl’s name was Karasayen, while annoying girl was Zelekodar. Karasayen seems remorselessly incisive, which wasn’t exactly convenient for me. I’ve no idea exactly where she stands in the Nuran hierarchy of importance, but she was pretty totally certain of herself.

"One of them," I agreed, resignedly. I’m liking that statue less and less.

"They say that it was you who saved us all, but I don’t see how."

"I saved Inisar. Inisar saved everyone else." Which is the most credit I’m going to accept for that whole situation.

"I’d heard Sentarestel was with the Setari, that her talents required special care," Karasayen continued. "And you’re taking on her servants as well, to keep her feeling secure? That’s very kind of you."

I shook my head, to stop myself from roaring at her for putting it that way. "No. I was simply very impressed by these three." I glanced down at the tops of Ys and Rye’s heads, well aware that they hadn’t relaxed at all at my arrival. "Practically alone of all who’ve come here, they had the intelligence to recognise the interface for the tool it is, and the courage to have it installed. I admire that a great deal." I looked back at the pinksuit, a woman named Truss Estey. "Sorry for the interruption."

"Not a problem." Estey took charge, telling everyone to sit down, and I gave Ys and Rye’s shoulders a squeeze and went back to my seat. I probably would have stayed the entire afternoon, watching anxiously, but Nils steered me out of the room soon after, since I had another of my apparently inescapable medical appointments.

Nils didn’t tease me, as I’d half-expected, but suggested I give the school a week to see how it goes, then left me to my blood tests.

There were no reports of upsets, and Ys and Rye seemed as usual when they returned. I’ve found Sen is a useful barometer of how the people around me are feeling, and her recovered chirpiness was a good sign, for all that Ys and Rye apparently wanted to not even be in the same room as me when they got back. They weren’t able to resist the next chapter of Caves of Nonora though.

And I told myself that by the time I finished writing up what has happened today Kaoren would be back, and I was wrong, and I can’t stand this. I’m going to ask if I can try visualising him.

Sunday, August 31

Overclocking

Maze and Tsur Selkie agreed to me attempting a visualisation, and the combined First and Second Squad and Tsur Selkie went out into near-space with me.

Nils tells me I’m going to have to start paying him babysitting, between the cats and the kids, but he was just teasing. Ys and Rye had at least gone to sleep – they’re sidestepping the bedtime Kaoren set them by getting up really early and ploughing through a thousand lessons before breakfast.

Visualising Kaoren was easy, though it took more energy than I was expecting. I’m not sure if that represented the number of spaces of distance, the size of the space he was in, or another factor. It was some kind of river valley, with high rocky walls, and so large both Fourth and Seventh were travelling together – it looked like they were in for a long tramp. Still whole, though, and I sagged with relief even as fake-Kaoren turned to Maze, more urgently intense than I’d ever seen him on mission.

"Surion, we were drawn away and a gate sealed behind us. It’s a trap, but not for us."

"Do you have a solid path?" Tsur Selkie asked, while First-Second Squad went all tensely alert and started scanning in every direction.

"None yet," fake-Kaoren said, and looked at me. "Drop the visualisation."

I was being a bit slow to understand, but have learned by now that he only uses that tone on me when he really means it, so reluctantly dropped the visualisation.

"Back to base, no delay," Tsur Selkie ordered, but at the same moment Maze said: "Threat," and so did Zee, and Regan added: "Multiple directions."

They’d been waiting in the surrounding spaces, at strategically chosen gates with a view of my testing area, and didn’t emerge until they saw the visualisation. My people-detect does kind of work through gates, but not very well. Combat Sight doesn’t at all, so there was no warning before there were dozens, maybe fifty, thickest around the gate back into real-space, but quickly zooming forward from every direction. Cruzatch.

"Caszandra, try to increase your connection to the Ena. Quickly." Maze was using his most even-toned captain voice, pushing me down to kneel beside my test chair even as the Setari contracted in a defensive formation around me, quickly enhancing in turn. "Kettara, Norivan, Light walls at first and eighth mark. Regan, Dolan, Fire at fourth and tenth."

The Setari snapped into action, setting up a hasty barrier of elements to slow the incoming charge. Cruzatch are very fast though, and most avoided damage, though at least couldn’t go straight through. But there were still others coming through the gaps which couldn’t be covered.

"Missiles," Maze said, as the nearest drew back their arms. "All Tel-Lev repel. Regan, bracket us with Ice, thick as you can manage."

I’m not terribly great at speedy reactions, especially trying to quickly do something which I usually need a calm state of mind to manage. The most I could do was close my eyes as the Cruzatch began throwing things at us, and send my senses out further and further, not trying to be calm, but just trying to sense anything alive out beyond the Cruzatch, as quickly as I could push it. It wasn’t a good way to do it – I felt forced, as if I’d pulled a muscle – and the things going on immediately around me kept trying to pull my attention back – Maze’s voice steady, flashes of heat and chill right near me. The Ddura hadn’t been called in the last few days, but the near-space was still very clear of Ionoth, and I was really glad when I found a lone swoop. It felt like ages away, and then it just felt like one of a world of points of life, and I stopped properly being aware of what was going on around me, and only vaguely noticed that most of the points of life around me abruptly vanished, and then I got incredibly dizzy and had to draw back to myself and found myself still kneeling next to my test chair, but in a pool of water, and I felt like I was going to pass out and was coughing because of some acrid smelling stuff which Ketzaren was trying to blow away even while she was coughing herself.

Almost all the Cruzatch were gone, vanished, and only Ketzaren, Tsur Selkie and one of First’s Kalrani spares, Az Norivan, were still on their feet. Regan and Lohn were unconscious and the rest had fallen, and were choking on the gas worse than me. Maze was right next to me, shaking and gasping and looking like he’d run a marathon. There were three Cruzatch still moving, hanging back at long distance, but unfortunately in the direction of the gate.

Ketzaren managed to get up enough of a breeze to move the gas away, but that didn’t help with the dizziness, and Zee passed out instead of recovering.

"Spel, Norivan, we three will advance as quickly as possible and attack," Tsur Selkie said, after a quick survey of the Cruzatch. "If they split and attempt to make for this point, Norivan and I will return. Spel, you are to head as quickly as possible to the gate and call for reinforcement. Go."

His fingers brushed me as they went, and he blurred ahead of the other two, running all-out. Ketzaren followed, levitating Norivan along with her. As Tsur Selkie had predicted, the little cluster of Cruzatch split, one remaining to attack him while two came circling toward my location. Ketzaren dropped Norivan down to run back and obediently continued on toward the gate.

Enma Dolan from Second levered herself shakily to her feet as the two Cruzatch came at us, flying far more quickly than Norivan could run. She used Lightning, which was a mixed blessing since the enhanced ball she produced arced and spit so randomly that while one of the Cruzatch was zapped like a bug, it also meant that Norivan had to make a major detour.

Maze kept trying to get to his feet next to me, spiked out a nanosuit weapon, and then collapsed. I was feeling dizzier and dizzier – we’d obviously all had enough of a dose of the gas to be knocked out: it was just a matter of how long it would take for each of us. Setari trying to fight or use their talents while being all dizzy and on the verge of passing out are not safe people to be around, as I discovered when Norivan desperately threw a Light wall into the path of the remaining Cruzatch, and the thing appeared horizontally directly above us. She was damn lucky Dolan had collapsed by then. She did get the Cruzatch, though.

I guess the way my breathing slows down when I’m expanded is the reason I held on longer than everyone else. As Norivan dropped, I poked my head cautiously above my test chair and saw that the Cruzatch Tsur Selkie had been fighting (he has no elemental talents or nanoweapons, so had basically been kickboxing the thing) had decided to ignore him and come back and get me. Tsur Selkie fell down, and there I was, the only person still conscious, with one Cruzatch remaining.

I knew I had no chance of outrunning anything that flies, so straightened and formed one of the suit weapons. And the damn thing grinned at me, one of those Cheshire Cat smirks stretching over excessive amounts of its face. Annoyance briefly overtook terror, and I set my feet and tried to remember everything Mara has taught me.

Then I passed out.

But I got to see the cavalry arrive, right before I dropped. I’m glad I missed the next bit. The Cruzatch apparently grabbed me and made for the nearest gate – giving me yet another set of minor burns, this time from being slung over its arm. Fortunately only Cruzatch claws are super-hot, and so my nanosuit was able to mostways cope with the heat. Arad Nalaz from Squad One saved me by simply using Telekinesis at the extent of his range to grab me back.

The gas kept us all unconscious for a couple of hours, but Maze, Tsur Selkie and I were the only ones actually injured. Tsur Selkie and me with minor burns, and Maze from the side-effects of using his Fire talent all-out while being extra-enhanced by me, which put a huge strain on his heart and caused some bleeding and swelling in the brain. So he gets lots of scans and monitoring for blood clots, and won’t be on duty for a while, but I suspect he found some level of satisfaction in crispifying all but three of the Cruzatch in a fiery maelstrom of ultimate doom. The Ice he had Regan make was to protect us from him using his talent like that, the first and probably only time anyone’s going to dare use an elemental while my enhancement is at max.

Fourth and Seventh couldn’t find a path back to Pandora at all through the spaces they’d been lured into, but eventually managed to work their way to a different part of Muina. Fortunately there’s much better satellite coverage now, so they could simply signal their location, and a ship’s gone to pick them up. They should be here by dawn, and other than being really tired are completely fine.

Kaoren opened an interface channel to me as soon as he was in real-space – not a channel request, but using his Captain privileges to not have to wait a moment longer to say: "Are you injured?"

"No – not much," I said, and after that we could barely talk to each other. A few more short sentences and then we’ve just kept the link open and streamed our visuals to each other so we can see and not try to put anything into words.

And there is no doubt left at all that the Cruzatch badly want to get their hands on me. KOTIS Command has ordered the Ddura be kept in constant attendance at Pandora until they decide what to do (which means Ghost is in constant attendance on my lap). I’m sore and very tired, even with my drugged-out nap, but there’s no way I want to sleep till Kaoren’s here. Not long now. Zee’s agreed to spring me from the infirmary.

September

Monday, September 1

Reasons

Nils was asleep on my couch when Zee brought me back to my apartment, but she shifted him to the couch in her room, and I’d love to know what he felt about waking up there, or why Zee didn’t take any of the many other couch options available. Zee is way too good at not giving anything away.

While she was gone I checked on the kids and found that Sen had climbed in with Ys, but they’d otherwise slept through. Zee came to look at them too, and told me she’d arranged for Mara to come make sure they got breakfast and off to class so Kaoren and I didn’t have to worry about getting up in the morning.

I think I’m proving a pretty inadequate foster parent, and asked Zee if she thought I would do the kids more damage than good taking them in when both Kaoren and I lived such weird and dangerous lives.

"I should hope you asked yourself that before now," she said, but not harshly. "Would it have been better for them if you made clear that you were too caught up in other matters for them to be a priority? Have you discovered why Sentarestel was being pursued?"

"Korinal and Inisar think it likely that her Sights make her valuable enough to want to control – that some remnant of House Renar wanted her to regain part of the status they’ve just lost. Though at least she’s apparently not anywhere near what would count as next in line to the throne of Nuri. The main candidate for that is in the talent school, along with one of the children from House Renar, and–" I sighed. "Anyway, I’m sorry First Squad has had to pick up my slack."

"Don’t be – you’re not alone in seeing something in that trio. And it’s a refreshing change to deal with children as children rather than Kalrani."

I think the conversation made Zee sad, but I’m glad she sat with me and helped me stay awake until Kaoren arrived. A couple of months ago I would have been firmly encouraged to go to sleep, or kept sedated in the infirmary, but they’ve worked out that I’ve got a better chance of nightmare control if I wait.

Zee mentioned that it was lucky Seventh was the squad with Fourth and I guess that’s so – whatever else Forel might be, she’s determined to do her job well, and her squad has a massive amount of elemental firepower. Thanks to Seventh’s strength, Fourth and Seventh paid for their marathon in the Ena only with exhaustion.

Kaoren ate and showered on the flight back and spent the rest of his time listening to me talk to Zee and getting through a fairly epic report so he was free to come straight to our quarters to kiss me breathless and examine the blue jelly bandages across my stomach and side, and let himself for a few minutes just be really upset that I’d been hurt and he hadn’t been there.

Kaoren’s such a very decisive and in-control person, and after he’d guessed what reason the Cruzatch would have for cutting off their path back to Pandora, he hadn’t been able to do anything about it. For all of the long journey searching for a path through the spaces he’d had no way of knowing whether I’d been brought out to try to find the missing squads, and if there’d been the ambush he anticipated, and whether I’d been taken. Even once we were back together he couldn’t properly speak to me. He’d had to stay cool captain in charge for all that time in the Ena, and he’d done that, but he’d wound himself so tight inside that he started shaking when he finally could hold me.

Neither of us were in a state to do anything but clutch each other, and my burns made it awkward even to snuggle together properly – they’re comparatively minor, but I’m going to have to sleep on my back for a few days. We rearranged pillows, and Kaoren propped me up against his chest, and finally relaxed enough to pass out.

I’d only been asleep a couple of hours when repeated tugging on the hem of my pyjamas dragged me awake. I felt like complete shit, headachy and heavy and itchy hot and tender about the middle, and I’m sure Ys and Rye now have a very strong impression of me as not a morning person. It was Ys doing the tugging, while Rye stood behind her at the door, and I squinted at them blearily for a long moment. It was the first time they’d ever sought me out, so I wasn’t about to just send them away, but I could have asked for better timing.

"You okay?" I asked – not very coherently.

"It wasn’t true, what you said," Ys said. Firm statement, though with a suggestion of sword-at-throat. The first time she’s spoken to me.

"Which thing that I said?" I asked, struggling a little more upright while trying not to disturb Kaoren. It’s not often anyone could walk into our room without waking him.

"We had the machine in our head because Sentarestel told us to," Rye said, chin high. "Not because we understood what it meant. Not because of what you said."

I really wasn’t up to two kids making what they seemed to think was a firing-squad confession. It took a bit of processing time, which I covered by glancing back at Kaoren, and discovering that my stomach really wasn’t liking me doing anything stretchy. Then with some more cautious levering I managed to sit up.

"Do you always do exactly what Sen tells you to?"

"Sentarestel only ever tells us right things."

"So she told you to get the interface install because would let you learn how to read, and because you trust her Sight you did?"

They both nodded, as if it was a great admission of guilt.

"You were intelligent enough to trust Sen’s Sight, and brave enough to do something new and strange on her word. How was I wrong?"

Ys looked stymied, and Rye near tears. "It’s – you shouldn’t–"

"I think I should," I said, standing up gingerly, but deciding it was a bad time to try hugging. "I see you and want you to feel you’re safe and you belong. It’s not complicated thing."

I headed into our lounge-kitchen, and set out breakfast just in time for Mara to show up. She gave me one of her assessing looks, and summoned a greysuit to give me a nice dose of painkiller. Kaoren half-woke when Mara sent me to bed after the greysuit’s visit, but just rearranged us and went back to sleep until late afternoon.

I’m back in medical for a stomach inspection and entirely unnecessary brain scan, and Kaoren’s off at a meeting which he tells me is about what to do about me. Lohn is keeping me company, and I guess I’m always going to have someone keeping me company from now on, even in the Setari building.

Having fifty Cruzatch come after me has made being babysat seem like a very minor thing.

I hope I said the right thing to the kids.

Tuesday, September 2

Settling In

One bit of good news Kaoren passed on when I was released from medical yesterday afternoon – they were able to find their way back to Muina because Par had succeeded in focusing his connection to the Ena. He’s only able to do it in short bursts, but he can reliably enhance himself now. I went and found Par and hugged him, and he gave me one of his slow smiles, knowing exactly what I was thanking him for.

Kaoren’s other bit of news was that my projection training in the Ena has been cancelled till further notice, which was no news at all. The possibility of ambushes, and the discovery that the Cruzatch can mess around with the gates, means that even the doubled Setari squads are going to be limited in the kind of missions they undertake.

Eighth and Squad One and one of the Nuran Setari went out to examine the gate which was blocked to try to figure out exactly what happened to it, and brought back a bunch of readings but no clear answer. The Ddura is going to be summoned to Pandora three times daily on a random schedule in an effort to prevent ambushes in the immediate area, and some greensuits will be permanently stationed at the amphitheatre to call it on a moment’s notice. More drones will be set into near-space, to try to track any Cruzatch movement, and they’re looking at some kind of breather which can be used to counter another gas attack (unfortunately our underwater breathers don’t work out of water).

The dealing-with-Devlin meeting had been argumentative, with the senior KOTIS representatives disagreeing about what to do next.

"We have more pieces of this puzzle," Kaoren told me, "but as yet no way to put them together. Without any direction, we are left reacting instead of acting."

It’s rare for Kaoren to let himself sound so frustrated, but a going-nowhere meeting on top of yesterday had really got to him. We are all pretty much running about like headless chickens, not even able to see a way to a solution.

The rest of the day was a complete contrast – determinedly focused on the business of resettling a world, which has been powering on despite the plots of burny floating people. When we took the kids down to the common room for dinner, the chatter was all strictly kept to the expedited intake of some of the approved settlers from Tare and Kolar, including a small group who are basically the newly-created Muina Broadcasting Corporation. They’d arrived that morning and lost no time setting up, and even did an evening broadcast which the Setari all watched and discussed.

To a degree the MBC is going to be a mouthpiece of KOTIS – they have some strict rules they have to follow while the settlement remains under military command – but they’re otherwise independent and took a friendly, chatty sort of approach to their stories, which were mostly about the school structure and housing set up for the Nurans, and the progress of the construction of the industrial complex, the completion of which will truly make Muina independent, because so long as it’s operating, technicians can with time, care and nanotech produce pretty much anything.

The MBC crew had also done a series of interviews with the people who had been selected for early settlement, and it was fun to see the mix of joy, ambition and nervous excitement the new arrivals brought.

I particularly enjoyed an interview with a family of Kolarens who were related to one of the greysuits working at Pandora, and were going to operate a store at the edge of the residential complex, close to Moon Piazza. It will be a mixture of café and trading post and luxury import service. Their hugely excited teenaged children seem to be founding members of the Raiten Shaf Fan Club, one of the girls announcing that he and all the other Setari (but especially Shaf) would always be given a free cup of fahr (a treacly tea) whenever they dropped by.

Of course all the Setari found this very funny, and teased Shaf about needing to take a bodyguard with him to save him from his fans. Kolaren Setari don’t have an image shield, so are much better known on their home world.

After dinner Kaoren and I played an interface game with the kids. Many Taren games, particularly for children, have a big physical component – necessary when so much of their lives can be conducted sitting down. This one was a spelling game which created an overlay of plants and statues in our lounge room, and then hid letters all over the place, which you had to hunt and touch to spell words.

It gave the kids appropriate challenges for their learning level (basic letter recognition and cat and dog equivalents) and Kaoren incredibly complex polysyllabic words which he collected without an error, and me moderately advanced words which I kept almost spelling right but not quite. Even Sen beat me.

Ys and Rye are trying to return to not talking to us, but Rye slipped a few times, caught up with the game. After they were settled in bed, Kaoren and I sat on the grassy slope outside our balcony, listening to the sounds of the early evening out over the lake, and just being glad to be alive and together.

The kids are aware that I’ve been injured (Sen unceremoniously lifted my shirt at breakfast so that she could inspect my bandages), and we’ve been trying to set up systems to cover the times our routine is interrupted by emergencies. Kaoren created calendar icons and stepped the kids through viewing and interpreting our schedules. This was a pretty large conceptual leap for children from a sundial time system. Sen followed in only the most general way, but it was some measure of Ys and Rye’s capacity that they were able to interpret the blocks of colour to discover that I had an appointment this afternoon (more medical), that Kaoren had morning and afternoon sessions (squad training) and that tomorrow both Kaoren and I are booked for almost all day (going to Kalasa). They can’t read the explanations yet, but Kaoren showed them how to run a text-to-sound facility, producing a kind of frozen amazement as he put entries in their own calendars for school, story time, and bedtime and the interface obligingly read them out.

He also showed them how to use the Taren dictionary function – which combines nicely with the text-to-sound facility. Hard to imagine being so tremendously excited about a dictionary, but it briefly broke Ys' control: she was obviously delighted at having a book which told her the meaning of all the words.

This afternoon, after my medical session and Kaoren’s training is done, we’re going to go for a walk along the lake (with Lohn and Mara and Nils and Ketzaren, since Kaoren’s not allowed to take me anywhere alone any more). I also want to take a trip up the river to see if I can work out roughly where I arrived from Earth, and Kaoren is going to try and arrange that, but says there might be resistance.

Wednesday, September 3

Cattiness

Really enjoyed the walk yesterday afternoon, although Lohn and Nils started asking me questions about my arrival here (ten months ago!), and then took great delight entertaining the kids with a highly coloured history of Cassandra Devlin. Ys produced some marvellously incredulous looks.

Mara hates being injured. Even Taren science won’t let her shrug off massive blood loss, bite wounds on arm and side, and crushing fractures. During our mild walk I could see her tiring, and getting frustrated with herself, and Lohn watched her like a hawk, all the while pretending not to, so I guess he’s under orders not to fuss. Sen provided a useful excuse to fly back – which is a pretty spectacular thing to do at sunset beside a lake. We endlessly confused a flock of ducks, and since Rye seems to be fascinated by animals, Nils kidnapped the kids to follow after them for a while, and brought three very pink-cheeked children back for a goodbye dinner for Second, who returned to Tare today. Nils took Ghost with him, and I’ll miss them both rather a lot.

I can just imagine the reaction of those ducks. Whatthehellare- Fly faster! Fly faster!

I’m enjoying our new evening routine – we played a maths game this time, which was far easier for me than spelling, with Kaoren only just edging me out of first place. If I ever do beat Kaoren in one of these things, it won’t be because he let me win. I told him I’d own him in a game of Pictionary and he had me describe what that was and that’s what we’re going to play later today.

I also dug out some of my bubble bath, which made it impossible to get Sen out of the bath until I pointed out that it would mean we wouldn’t get through a whole chapter of Caves of Nonora before she was supposed to be asleep.

Ys and Sen bathe in their bathroom, while Rye uses ours. I generally leave them alone for it, but noticed today when I offered the bubble bath that Ys was being very careful not to let me see her back. It’s hard to decide whether that’s out of shame, or distrust of me, but it did mean I had to go into the lounge and take a lot of deep breaths.

Most of today Kaoren and I were at Kalasa for a multi-purpose assignment allowing the various recently-arrived Setari to be judged by Muina, and for me to do a very minor visualisation, and also to let this latest batch of Setari enhance while my attachment to the Ena is increased so they become aware of the mechanism.

The first task scheduled, though, was to bring down the shielding on the malachite marble building so they can run a new series of scans, and since they currently don’t want me near it, I was given permission to go outside the city valley until they were ready to move on to the enhancement rounds. It’s early Spring at Kalasa, and while Kaoren was with the group staring at the Green Stone of Possible Doom, the rest of Fourth took me out the valley gate, which opens high above the lake with a view down over sweeping slopes still patched with snow, but otherwise totally covered in wildflowers.

Snow and masses of flowers side-by-side were a new thing for me, and Fourth Squad were as interested as I was during the short walk along a newly-worn path to the research building which has been named after me. The mass of colours didn’t have as strong a scent as I’d expected, but tremendous variety.

Caszandra (or Kaszandra) is an iceberg. A few small blocky buildings providing entrances, and quite a large complex below ground. Iskel Teretha, the pinksuit who was the head administrative person for the research station, took us on a tour, chatting happily about all the particular challenges they faced there – the island gets far worse weather than Pandora, and doesn’t have a Ddura which can be summoned, so Ionoth are a regular occurrence. So they have all this gorgeous view but live underground and have to have an escort of greensuits to go outside the buildings, even with a Setari squad periodically coming out to sweep the island and near-space.

I spent the entire tour thinking in terms of Underground Science Complex = Evil Lair and trying to decide if it was more James Bond or Zombie Infestation. I did check out escape routes, but managed not to ask if the building had a self-destruct sequence, just as I manage (if only barely) not to say "You killed my father, prepare to die," on the rare occasions I get to introduce myself these days. It still bugs the hell out of me that all the jokes I’d worn thin with repetition back home are completely inexplicable here.

Though I have a cunning plan about that, which I must put into operation sooner rather than later…

Anyway, after a brief consultation over whether the greysuits had found anything poisonous about the flowers, I received permission to pick myself a glorious bunch of them (some of which I later gave to Mori, who looked like she wished she could be all non-professional on duty and pick some too).

My visualisation test was located in the empty building the technicians are using for headquarters down near the platform junction. They wanted me to increase my connection to the Ena, and then try to visualise the room at the time of the March of Dawn – and absolutely not the time of the disaster.

Having a bunch of people come and paw me while my mind is elsewhere isn’t something I’m all that comfortable with, even with squads I don’t dislike. I’d never discussed her with him, but Kaoren knows perfectly well that I could do without Forel, and that’s probably why he told me beforehand that he’d be with me the whole time. And it looked to me like he sent the captain of Eighth (his friend Ro) to make sure all of Seventh stayed at a distance until my senses were fully expanded and I wasn’t focused on how little I liked Forel around – and instead on the discovery that there’s lots of little furry animals like lemmings or guinea pigs living in burrows on the island.

After attempting a little furry animal count, I followed flocks of birds until I started to feel vague at my centre, and withdrew back to myself enough to notice that a greysuit, Maze, Inisar and Kaoren were sitting with me, which was the signal to switch to trying the visualisation. For a few moments it felt like I wouldn’t be able to do anything – my mind was so hard to focus – then instead of dipping into Kalasa’s past I ended up creating a projection of the weird squiggly power things I’d seen while I was sleeping. I did it across the entire city for quite a while until I noticed that I had developed three greysuits instead of one, and it occurred to me to stop. I felt fine, but my brain activity, breathing and heartbeat had really slowed again, which means I get to spend all afternoon having blood tests and scans.

But the projected squiggles pleased the technicians, and overall it was considered a good result day. All of the Nurans passed Muina’s judgment, which didn’t surprise me at all. And Forel passed, which I guess is a good thing, since it was neither nice nor sensible of me to hope that she’d be the first Setari who failed.

But, bored in medical, I played back what the interface had recorded while my mind wasn’t paying attention, and got an earful.

Kaoren had as promised stayed with me the entire time, and the Setari visited me in pairs to spend about a minute each touching my arm or hand and having the mechanism of the enhancement made very clear to them. Forel was the last to come, and shifted from a neutral, surprised comment about the mechanism to saying how much she admired Kaoren’s ability to keep me calm, and that he was doing a fantastic job with me.

All Kaoren said was: "Cassandra manages herself very well.”

"I have to admit I was surprised you went into this," Forel added, being all confiding and secretive. "Though you always were one to put the mission above all else."

I wish my eyes had been open so I could have recorded the expression on Kaoren’s face. "If you’ve finished exhibiting your complete ignorance of who I am," he said, "it’s time to move on to the next stage of this outing." Cold, irritated, bored. The very arrogant person he prefers not to be, goaded into making clear his disdain for Forel. She didn’t say anything else, but laughed as she left, very smug and purry.

I don’t know if she hoped I’d hear, or if she really believes Kaoren has been ordered to sleep with me. It’s made me think a lot – not about Kaoren being in love with me, because I have no doubt that he is – but about how he behaves with other people. How he used to behave with me, when he was trying to keep me out. I remember that I used to think he wasn’t a very nice person – not nasty like Kajal, but hardly brimming with kindness and goodwill toward all. There are very few people he takes a personal interest in, and for the rest he is either very professional, or doesn’t care about at all.

I would be very much in the mood to do interesting things to Kaoren right now, except the medics bored with blood tests and started fooling around with the burns on my stomach again, and have given me a shot of something which makes me want to vomit.

Thursday, September 4

Into each other

Kaoren can draw. Really well – quick, effortless lines which immediately capture what he’s trying to portray. I should have expected it, given what he’d told me about his family, and what I’d seen of his brother’s work. When he chose to put all his energy into becoming a Setari instead of following his family’s lead, it wasn’t out of lack of artistic ability.

I was being very laid-back after dinner, thanks to floaty drugginess mixed with queasiness, and so reacted to Kaoren’s skill only with a variety of pleased wonder, much as the kids did. Kaoren had had Ro Kanato create a random list of words which people from three different worlds and wildly different age groups would have a chance of drawing and guessing. It was a fun game, and Rye wasn’t able to not laugh. Ys will be the hardest to crack, but she tried very hard with her drawings, and spoke when guessing Kaoren’s, and when she and Kaoren won she went very pink (and extra-basilisky) when he told her well done.

It was only later, when we were trialing stuffing a large number of pillows between us (which lasted about half an hour until Kaoren decided queasiness was not enough reason not to curl up with me), that I worked my way around to asking him not only about how he felt about drawing, but also about Forel’s comments.

"Do you think Forel really believes you’ve been ordered to sleep with me? Or was she hoping I’d hear and get upset?"

He went still a moment – his usual reaction to me saying something he didn’t expect – then leaned forward to look at my face. Then leaned back.

"If I believed that comment was intended for you, she’d be on report right now, but it was very likely her attempt to rationalise a situation which unsettles her." He reached across the barrier of pillows to touch my hand. "You didn’t feel a moment’s uncertainty, did you?"

Kaoren looked rather wry when I explained that the possibility had occurred to me our first night together, but agreed that it would have been a particularly stupid move on his part. He wanted to know why I’d been so thoughtful all evening, if Forel hadn’t upset me, and I told him I’d been thinking about how he behaves with the kids, and whether I’d changed him, or just given him an opportunity to be more himself.

He wasn’t really sure which better fit about how he felt with me, but he knows he is behaving in unexpected ways.

"I haven’t drawn for years," he said. "I stopped completely during a home visit when I was thirty. That was such – it caused the rift between Arden and I. But I needed to put it aside to follow this path, and I’ve not done more than take Siame to exhibitions since. Yet when you suggested that game, so sure that it was something I couldn’t do–"

"Had to prove me wrong?"

"Anticipating your expression made producing a handful of sketches a strangely minor issue. I’m finding myself capable of more than a few things that I thought I could not devote time to, and I suspect what you’ve changed is my sense of proportion."

That was about the point he decided there were too many cushions.

Nothing much happening today – Fourth is out jogging again. But the medics tell me they’ll leave my bandages off today. My stomach has this big silvery band of crinkling skin curling around my side. Tomorrow another trip to Kalasa.

Lessons

When the kids came back from school today Sen was a bit hyper and over-energetic, so I asked what she’d been doing and found that since all the other children were having classroom lessons, my three were doing interface lessons in a study room all day (except for lunch). Ys and Rye are fine with this, but Sen has the Sights to be completely aware she isn’t playing with real people, and thus isn’t as responsive to the interface teacher.

I went and liberated a couple of balls from the Setari training rooms – a variety used for dodging practice – and though they were a little zingier than a tennis ball they were fine for handball. We played on the patio, marking a line with a scrape of mud. There was just enough room for a four-way battle, or two two-sided battles. I doubt I would have played there if Seventh were back from their Kalasa patrol, but it was just parts of First Squad in residence, and Sen really loved it when Maze played against her but down on his knees, especially since he always seemed to manage to hit balls she had a chance of returning. Lohn had a match with Rye and Zee played Ys. When the kids were tired out Zee, Maze, Lohn and Ketzaren had an amazing all-out battle. I’ve been playing handball since primary school, and they were all better than me in about five minutes.

When Fourth returned from jogging (all sweaty and tired – Kaoren’s pushing their fitness again), Sen insisted Kaoren and Maze match up, which is something Kaoren would normally refuse, but even Kaoren isn’t immune to Sen.

Maze and Kaoren were pretty evenly matched – both with similar speed and both with Combat Sight – and put on a spectacular display of blurring motion and long rallies. Maze had the advantage early on, but Kaoren eventually pulled even and probably would have taken the game if they hadn’t decided to call it quits at ten points each. The extra anticipation Sight Sight gives him makes him very hard to fight.

Though I guess Maze is still recovering from mass Cruzatch burning. I hadn’t been planning on dinner downstairs because Seventh would be back, but Zee opened a channel to me and asked me to keep the kids down. I wasn’t sure why till I saw her watching Maze with Ys and Rye. Maze has been under so much stress lately, and I realised then that I hardly ever see him smile at all these days. Some things are worth putting up with Forel.

And it was hilarious watching Sen work the room as the Setari arrived back for the day. She thoroughly enjoys having lots of people around to charm – and she pleased me no end by seeming to avoid the people in Seventh who I’m wary of, but picking out the few who seem reasonable to introduce herself to. Her big thing at the moment is to go around introducing herself and trying to read the name display of the person she’s talking to – she mangles their names pretty spectacularly, but almost deliberately I think.

Maze was far more successful at chatting with Ys and Rye than I’ve yet been, for all they still act like they expect to be punished for speaking in public (I have a horrible feeling that’s because they have been punished for speaking in public), but you could hear the sheer pleasure creeping into their voices as they told Maze all about dictionaries and how you can look up an explanation of every word you heard, and the interface would even read it out to you. That the interface would read out whole books to you and that there were so many books in there that they hadn’t even been able to reach the bottom scrolling down the first letter when browsing the list of them.

After dinner we played the spelling game again – and even in the past few days Ys and Rye have improved to the point where they know all the Taren alphabet and can manage most two and three letter words. After the game tonight Kaoren told them if next time they played they got a better score then they could ask for a treat of their choice, and they practically turned inside out trying not to look pleased. Though, given that the interface seems to be the greatest treat imaginable to them, I’m not sure what treat they might ask for.

Since they’re able to use the interface to read for them, I was half-expecting them to have finished off the book I’m reading Sen, but whether they have or not they still listened as keenly. Sen’s gone very snuggly, seeming to know that my burns have ceased to require pain meds and care, and insisted on two bedtime hugs during her story, and more from Ys and Rye between bath and story time.

I don’t think they’re ever likely to think of me as Mum, but they’re starting to believe they’re allowed to be here. I feel all over the place at times, jumping back and forth between world-saving and fumbling attempts at parenting, but in a way Mara was right – the kids are a great distraction for both of us – certainly for me, because not wanting to be all upset in front of them has lent me a certain amount of calm.

Friday, September 5

All Around

Rotten dreams last night. Over and over being kidnapped by Cruzatch – not too-real dreams, just straightforward nightmares, which are a lot harder to force myself awake from. Kaoren had nightmares too – probably communicated by me – and we figured we were most likely having a delayed reaction to the ambush. At dawn we gave up on bed and walked down to the lake (which is not strictly permitted for me at the moment, and I suspect even such a short trip meant Kaoren had to tell whoever was on watch that we were going).

It’s not Kaoren’s style to pretend that bad things won’t happen, or that he has the power to make everything okay, and so we had a short discussion about wills and making arrangements for the kids in case something happens. He thinks it’s important that they don’t end up with his parents.

KOTIS Command will probably stop quivering in a corner soon and go back to more dangerous experiments, but today’s trip to Kalasa was another attempt at visualising the past in the same room. Exactly the same result as last time, but I had the distinct impression that the device technicians really wanted me to make all the light squiggles anyway, since they were all having excited discussions about it when I came back to myself. One of the things the technicians had particularly wanted to see was how the light squiggles reacted to the malachite marble, and they found that the marble has its own set of squiggles, and seems to eat any Kalasan squiggles that come near it.

It’s pretty solidly accepted now that the malachite marbles were some secret construction related to the Cruzatch. Most of the technicians are of the opinion that the marbles interfered somehow with the platform and Pillar infrastructure set up by the main body of Lantarens and thus are the major cause of the tears between spaces. A smaller group argue that the platform and Pillars themselves would have still had the same effect on the Ena.

Plenty of theories, but no-one’s come up with any solutions.

On the good news front, this afternoon Kaoren and I held a quiet celebration over the fact that he’s started to be able to enhance himself. He can’t do it as reliably as Par, yet, and has only told me. He says he suspects he’s not the only one who’s reached this stage, but because it’s such a sensitive issue for the Setari, few are talking about their own efforts. He doubts all Setari will be able to achieve the enhancement – certainly not in the short term – but he thinks he knows why Par achieved it first. Just as my connection with the Ena grows stronger when I concentrate on everything surrounding me, it was the key Kaoren used to discovering how to focus his own connection. Path Sight and Combat Sight are a big aid.

Tomorrow is a rest day, and Kaoren plans to spend the morning off on one of the islands working on enhancement. But he’s going to come back at lunch and take me and the kids (and a suitable escort, I guess) off to visit Pandora’s first ever café.

Saturday, September 6

Out and About

I asked Raiten Shaf to be one of my escorts to the café, on the theory that the Kolaren family who runs it would be so distracted drooling over him that they’d not pay any attention to me. I don’t think Raiten’s very keen on being fawned over by fans, but he thought the idea of playing distraction was funny enough, and I ended up having an all-captain escort of Kaoren, Raiten, Maze and Ro. It still bugs me that I can’t just go for a walk into town by myself, but it’s getting better now that I’m on a first-name basis with almost everyone who gets assigned to guard me.

Ys and Rye had been in an odd mood all morning – pleased not to have to go to the school, I think, but also having some sort of argument whenever I wasn’t around. Sen obviously didn’t know what Ys and Rye were discussing, which put her out of temper with them, and she insisted on playing a game alone with me. I cheered her up by braiding her hair with ribbons, which she adored (and finally gave me something to do with them – Nenna had given them to me and I’m not a ribbon person and had just stuffed them in a pocket of my backpack).

It made Sen forget she was annoyed and she ran and fetched Ys and made her come and have her hair done the same way. Ys has quite short hair, a bit ragged and neglected, and I couldn’t possibly do it in two long braids like Sen’s, but I went and borrowed a pair of scissors and tidied it up a little and then did small, ribbon-bound braids holding back the sides. Ys endured this, and wouldn’t even look at the result in the mirror.

Rye’s hair I just neatened a little, and I did my own in a French braid (assisted by Sen) and found a Summery dress and felt good about myself. I’ve ordered more clothes for the kids, but am still waiting on delivery – and even with my lush wage I had to wince at the shipping charges, which are deliberately discouraging.

Still, we all looked very neat when Kaoren arrived back, and he obligingly changed to one of the few non-uniform outfits he brought with him. The other captains were also dressed not to stand out and I have to admit that I was almost as excited as Sen. Going out to the shops for lunch – something so normal and unremarkable for me on Earth – is more unusual for me now than flying, fighting monsters, or meeting world leaders.

Moon Piazza is quite a long way away from the Setari building, which is the far-flung southern point of Pandora, and so we had a nice walk to work up our appetites and arrived after what would count as the lunch time rush. We had the option of walking through the science buildings (the university, as I keep thinking of it), or looping through the old town, and decided to go through the old town to gawk at the changes which were slowly being made to it. A small team of archaeologists had never stopped working, even after much of the attention had been diverted to Arenrhon and Kalasa, and now that the snow was finally gone the botanical types were having a field day exploring the gardens, so we’d walk through patches that looked exactly as it had been when I first explored the place, and then a stretch of houses where all the gardens and buildings had been painstakingly restored and preserved.

Today wasn’t the weekend for just the Setari, but for most of Pandora, since the settlement has shifted to a four days on, one day break cycle, and so there were people – children – everywhere. The old town drew them like a magnet – the other major point of interest being Moon Piazza, which had lots of kids playing ball games – most groups had some kind of adult supervisor and there were some rather harassed-looking greensuits patrolling in an effort to keep the more adventurous out of any of the uncleared buildings. It wasn’t just Nuran children, but the long-serving KOTIS employees and the first wave of settler families, nervously picnicking on the lake’s bank.

Not wearing our uniforms was reasonably effective at muting attention – though walking around with four seriously fit guys isn’t exactly the best way to keep a low profile. Some of the gawking was down to me, some to Setari recognition, but much was down to ogling. Most of the Nuran kids, at least, had no idea who any of us were, and the Tarens and Kolarens simply stared or waved. Sen went into puppy mode, bouncing about, scampering off the path and bringing things back to show me or Kaoren. I ended up weaving all the flowers she kept bringing back into a little coronet for her, which she has yet to take off, crushed and wilted as it’s become. Ys and Rye continued to act seriously worried about something, paying a good deal more attention to Kaoren explaining to the other captains his theories on enhancement than on the beautiful day around them. I didn’t notice when they separated Maze out from our group – it was a quick sharp glance from Sen which tipped me off.

Sen is very much a sweet and joyful girl, but that doesn’t stop her Little Miss Machiavelli moments. Rather than go and find out why Ys and Rye had dropped behind, she held up her arms demandingly and when I picked her up kept taking peeks over my shoulder. I exchanged glances with Kaoren, then decided to pretend I hadn’t noticed. Ys and Rye’s conversation with Maze took a good hunk of our walk, while I tried to decide whether it was a good thing they’d decided to talk to someone, or a bad thing that they didn’t feel they could talk to me or Kaoren. It says something about how innately and obviously nice Maze is, that the brief conversation he’d had with them the other day had impressed them enough that they were willing to open up to him.

They looked inordinately relieved when they finally decided to catch up with us, took a few sidewise glances at me, then finally started paying attention to their surroundings. Sen wriggled to the ground and went and tucked herself between them, and I gave Maze a really need an explanation look. He opened a channel with Kaoren and I and asked: "Have you looked at the news feeds this morning?"

I hadn’t, but immediately looked, and could hardly miss the feature article titled: "Killing Caszandra Devlin". It was actually a pretty good article, discussing KOTIS' dilemma in trying to use me to find solutions to problems both major and minor. Because my talent set and connection to the Ena is so little understood even now, and yet so useful, they’re torn between poking Devlin at it and the repeated close calls I’ve had. The reporter had pieced together a pretty accurate summation of the injuries I’ve received since being rescued, which was impressive in a single list, and discussed the morality of almost inevitably getting me killed for the greater good.

"When did Ys and Rye get access to the main news services?" I asked, embarrassed not to have known. "That seems a little complex for the filtered, age-appropriate information the technicians described."

"It would fall in the challenging content area for children in their early thirties," Maze said, shrugging. "It’s the language differences which were causing most of the problem here – using a reader for a complex article in a different dialect. They wanted to know if the article meant that the leaders here were planning to kill you, and if you knew and had any chance of getting away." He gave me a wry smile. "They seem to have not wanted to ask you directly, since being marked for sacrifice would obviously be an upsetting thing for you to talk about."

"They don’t yet talk to Cassandra because they fear that as soon as they accept being a part of our family, we will reject them," Kaoren said, frowning as he studied the kids' backs. "They’ve been taught that they have no value, and won’t allow themselves to trust anyone treating them as important. But it’s a good sign that they’re becoming protective of you," he added to me. "For all we can do little to deny the dangers. I’ve found the steps we need to follow to ensure their care if we’re both lost."

Maze, though he looked sad at the blunt pragmatism of preparing for the possibility of us dying, only said: "I suspect that you might find more than a few among First and Second who have taken an interest in their future."

I just wanted to hug them all, but settled for catching up to them to point out the tower I’d lived in – well off to the north – and agreed to take them there after lunch (a trip made much easier by having a Setari escort who could fly us there). We headed down the stairs to Moon Piazza, where many of the buildings in the bracketing half-circle have been completed, and the residential areas just beyond are far less raw and un-lived-in, more like a place which might be a living town. The interiors of the museum and the art gallery were coming together, and some of the fancier shops. The area beyond the Piazza particularly surprised me, since it had just been paths and residences when I’d last been here, and now there were several new buildings in places which had been reserved for non-residential structures.

The biggest change was a school just past Moon Piazza’s outer circle – they grew an entire huge school in a week. Maze says there’s actually four of them, spaced out among the sprawling residential sector (and that’s still two thousand students per school – the closest one was for the oldest students). It’s something of an open-air school because they haven’t fitted the windows yet, and it follows the circle theme of most of the new structures in Pandora by being a full crescent shape, with rising smaller tiers going up five levels – once again merging with the slope of a hill. The circular school yard and the open part of the crescent face south so it will get a lot of sunlight during the day. Opposite the building is a much lower structure in the same shape – a huge two-tiered crescent around a lot of what will be flat, grassy areas once they finish removing boulders and bushes. This seems to have been designed as a youth recreation centre, with sections marked out as courts for different games, a small amphitheatre, lots of whitestone benches and tables, and – the entire reason for our trip – Pandora’s first store and café.

The store part was larger than the café part, and still mostly unstocked – just whitestone shelving everywhere. The café had opened two days ago (with plenty of teething problems, but a lot of good-humoured support), and I liked it straight up because it was playing actual music – from speakers instead of over the interface. It just makes all the difference. Whitestone everything does lend a certain sameness to the décor, helped along a little by a gorgeous desert scape filling one long wall in the interface, and some decorations hooked on the wall above the servery hatch. There were also a seemingly random bunch of painted handprints on the other wall, but before I could get a good look at them the fifteen-ish boy (impressive in an ankle-length black apron) who was seating people saw Raiten.

He whooped, reminding me of when I visited Isten Notra’s house, then reeled off welcometoMuina’sfirstcaféandpickanytableyoulike in a single stream of noise before turning and running into the kitchen. This was soon followed by a rather large crash. We all had to laugh a little at that, except Ys and Rye, who looked highly suspicious.

There were only a couple of tables which could seat a group our size, and we slid around one, ignoring the handful of other restaurant patrons, who were almost all openly staring. The tables were covered with the thin plastic tablecloths which were the next generation along from flat screen computer monitors – Kolar’s current level of technology. Each table cover was running a fancy patterned screensaver, but when we touched it, it shifted to a "Welcome to Café Crescent" message and then showed us menu selections.

Raiten recommended dishes, since most of the choices were Kolaren, and Sen had a wonderful time stabbing random selections and seeing pictures of food come up. I told her her eyes were bigger than her stomach, which sent her into peals of laughter (and Kaoren quietly cancelled most of her selections, and prodded Ys and Rye into picking something). We simply didn’t look at the crowd of faces cramming into the servery window, and I appreciated that the staff didn’t all come and squeal over us or anything, but instead carried out their usual duties except with a great deal of delight and huge, trembling smiles. The entire family took turns to bring us out glasses of water, and appetisers, and every serving separately.

It was definitely a good idea to bring Raiten along – he drew the majority of the attention, and I was able to concentrate on my lunch, and enjoyed my dessert almost as much as Sen (who enjoyed a bit of everyone’s desserts). The café staff invited us to put our handprints on their customer’s wall and write our names, and I glanced back as we left to see them all clustered around the wall comparing their hands to Raiten’s print. He’s a serious megastar on Kolar and I think it says a lot about how skewed my perspective has become that it’s never even occurred to me to fan girl him.

After a quick glance at my still-sealed tower, we went to look at the island where Kaoren has been practicing his enhancement. It was well out into the lake, and big enough that you would need an hour or more to walk around it. Really nice trees – tall and black-barked with fat flower buds all over them, but no leaves yet.

A tiny waterfall ran from a spring on the small central hill, and we followed the stream which drained the pool at its base, paddling in the shallows. Rye was in his element, forgetting to be shy as he and Sen searched the water for fish, and spotted tiny flowers and the occasional fleeing animal.

A definite holiday day, and all four of my captainly escort were looking refreshed when we flew back to the Setari building. I’m feeling – I don’t know – protective. Not just of three Nuran children, but all of them. Kaoren, Maze, Mara, Zee, Nils, Isten Notra, Tsur Selkie, my endless horde of medics. Every squad member. Planets' worth of people. Even Forel and Kajal.

It’s too late for us all to skip off into unicorns and roses, crisis solved, no bones broken. Nuri’s not coming back. But I just – yeah. I keep seeing the title of that news story. If fixing this means letting KOTIS risk me over and over in the hopes that they’ll learn something before they kill me, I guess I’m going to do that. Maybe not the most heroic approach, but I don’t have any better ideas.

Training with Mara tomorrow.

Sunday, September 7

Toughening Up

I continue to exhibit my lack of parenting chops by guessing the kids' ages totally wrong. I was reading through a comprehensive report provided by the school and found the age estimates according to their physiological development.

Sen I’d been right about – the estimate is twelve (four). Rye, though, is estimated as twenty-nine to thirty-two, and Ys as thirty-one to thirty-four. Ten to eleven, when I was thinking of them both as twelve. I can’t imagine myself at ten (let alone seven or eight) having all the responsibility of looking after a little girl. I so much want to find out more about them, to know how they ended up with only each other, but I think it’s going to be a long time before they’re at ease enough with me to talk about things like that.

I think they’re a bit like I was when I was first assigned to Fourth Squad, starting to feel like I fit in and happy to be near Kaoren, but knowing that I’d eventually be transferred, sure that I was just an assignment to him. Except for Ys and Rye it’s a thousand times more uncertain. They do like being read to, though, and the routine Kaoren’s established continues to please them. We finished the book I’d been reading and I’ve asked Rye to pick the next one.

Fifth and Eighth were swapped out for Sixth and Ninth today, and tomorrow is another starting people with self-enhancement session, and also an attempt to visualise the location of any other malachite marbles. Lacking any clearer direction, KOTIS has decided to make establishing malachite marble numbers and locations their highest priority.

I spent my day at Mara’s mercy, while Fourth was off doing more intensive training. Mara’s working getting my fitness up into her rehabilitation (and Lohn’s given me strict orders to wimp out and have an attack of vapours whenever it looks like Mara’s pushed herself too hard). She’s a lot better now, though, and could probably have run rings around me, but instead focused back on the basic combat stepping exercises, and then amusing herself throwing balls at me. We had lunch together sitting on the hill roof of the Setari building. It’s become a favoured spot already and someone’s put a couple of whitestone benches up there under the cluster of trees which survived a building growing beneath them.

Our visit to the café had sparked some questions about the three children who’d been with us, which in turn led to a wide range of news stories, the worst of which was about over-pampered me treating traumatised Nuran children like dolls. And yet another irritating expert talking about my isolation, and coping mechanisms, and how I was plainly trying to create a sense of stability and normality by building myself a family.

Fortunately there were also a lot of broader articles on how the mass of Nuran children were adjusting, the weight of the loss they would continue to feel, and the percentage which had been – officially and unofficially – made part of Taren and Kolaren settler families.

I was skimming some of the nastier articles when Mara said: "Nominate Lohn and I as replacement guardians."

Since Mara hadn’t seemed to approve of my connection with the kids, I had to hide my surprise. "Maze told you we’re making wills?"

She nodded. "I’d like to pretend that you needn’t think about such things, but it’s only sensible. And I’m…" Her mouth curved in a wide, bitter smile. "I’m so jealous I could strangle you."

There wasn’t any bite to her words – thankfully – so I only panicked a little, then slapped myself mentally and said: "Because you…" then paused, thinking it over. "Would you still be in the Setari if Maze wasn’t?"

"No. Or – perhaps. The situation has changed and retirement is out of the question until this crisis is over. But these past few years, since Helese, we’ve stayed because we couldn’t walk away from Maze. Which means putting our lives – so many things – on hold because the cycle of rotations and training and injuries leaves no time or energy for anything else. Even though I’d hardly want to be in your position, I’ll take leave to resent you just a little for the way those three have come to you."

"I hadn’t even thought–" I began, then blushed and said, "Sorry. And thank you. It really helps to know you’ll be there for them."

Then I asked her what the crisis being over – winning – would mean to the Setari program, to all those kids who’ve been living rigidly strict lives so they could grow up and kill monsters. What would they do if the monsters weren’t a problem any more?

Mara just gestured around her and of course the answer was completely obvious. And the way she smiled as she looked out over the lake was a proper Mara smile – warm and thoughtful and sure.

Monday, September 8

Secession

Last night (or just before dawn, rather) about a hundred of the older Nuran kids and a couple of the adults decided to leave Pandora. They took a bunch of tools from the old town gardens, and also a bucket of unformed whitestone, and went off north along the lake.

KOTIS Command knew straight away, of course – even before their ID tags flagged that they’d gone out of the town zone. But they simply informed the Nuran Setari, and Korinal and Inisar went for a talk.

Except for a lone ten year-old who they considered too young to make this choice, and who is now ensconced in the talent school to make it easier to keep an eye on her, the two Nuran Setari made no attempt to bring the group back. Instead they pointed out the Ddura’s usual range (which is about four days' walk if you could keep to a straight line, and means I either was walking in circles or was very very lucky) and gave them an emergency beacon which they could use if they wanted help returning to Pandora. Not for if they just wanted to call for help, mind you – only if they wanted to return. It was how the Nurans decided to handle it, and nobody is sure if it’s the right thing to do or not.

KOTIS held off making an announcement about it until mid-afternoon, saying its position was simply that it wasn’t in the business of holding people against their will.

There was a lot of back-and-forth discussion in the Setari common room about whether the splinter settlement would make a success of it, and why they went (not liking to be told to go to class and learn Taren reading and writing seems to have been a major factor, though it sounds like a few of them would have left no matter what). Muina’s a lot easier to live on than Tare or Kolar, but it’ll be a huge challenge compared to being looked after in Pandora.

Lohn asked me what I thought, being the resident expert in wilderness survival on Muina.

"Huge disaster," I said.

Inisar (who, like all the Nuran Setari, tends to keep his opinions to himself and just listen to these conversations) asked me why.

"Because you had to tell them how far Ddura’s protection extended. Whoever is leading them is idiot if he didn’t find that out before they left. And if idiot’s making decisions, they’ll keep doing silly things. I don’t understand point of building settlement a short flight from Pandora anyway. Wouldn’t it have been more sensible to demand be taken to one of the other platform villages, and re-establish it? It’s like they don’t really mean it."

"Their intention was for us to force them back," Inisar said, with the faintest nod. "There are two who wish to have a stronger voice in our decisions. A subsistence existence is not what they desire, nor would it preserve our culture and values as they claim to want. The young among them who are angriest at the new conditions of their lives would have been infuriated if they were brought back against their will, increasing support for those who drove them to this move. We will post one to observe them secretly, although it is not a good use of our resources, and protect them if absolutely necessary. Any return which is not entirely of their own choosing would create a true fracture."

I could see that Maze and Raiten had already known this, and Kaoren as usual looked wholly unsurprised. But even Ys and Rye didn’t so much as blink, so I asked them about it later after I’d finished the first chapter of the (long and dramatic) story Rye chose to have read next.

"Some at the school were talking about it today," Rye said, after a glance at Ys. "They said the same thing."

I didn’t ask any more, but it’s silly how pleased I was that he answered me.

Otherwise, a fairly uneventful day. Rather than go to Kalasa, they had me expand my senses and attempt my visualisation in a test building they’ve created for me here (a bit inland from the Setari building and well away from any other building). Sixth (the squad who lost one of their members during the Pillar retrieval) and Ninth (all happy and relaxed now Anya’s just a bad memory), filed through and then I brought my senses back and tried to visualise malachite marbles. I did that fine, but only the two that we already knew about – easily distinguishable from the KOTIS monitoring equipment.

Since that didn’t work they’re going to fall back on aerial surveys looking for more installations like Arenrhon, since the book Inisar gave me talked about a number of underground dwellings. The Setari squads and the Nurans are going to scout using Path Sight. Inisar says that his Telepathy doesn’t allow him to hear the Ddura from real-space, so I’ll probably get to go on these missions to see if I can reproduce my tracking of Arenrhon.

I’m looking forward to the missions – my two fave squads and lots of touring and exploration.

Tuesday, September 9

Wounds

Training with Mara today involved handball in the morning (on a newly-created patch of whitestone specifically marked out for handball games). Mara says she sees no reason why I shouldn’t be able to dodge balls if I can hit them, and even though one of her arms is still strapped and healing, she practically had me dodging the balls playing with her – hard, fast games which left me panting.

After another rooftop lunch, and a quick tour of the nearby trees to look at the flush of opening blossoms (mostly white tipped with pink, like the first flowers, but a variety of others, including purple and a vivid orange), all of First worked out in the gym. A really hard session for me – lots of repetitions and different machines to use, but enjoyable in a way because I haven’t completely lost what little condition I’ve gained and so didn’t die from it immediately.

Mara and I both had a session in medical after that – me for the first cosmetic work on my stomach (which means I spent the rest of the day queasy and dozy) and Mara to gauge the recovery of the muscles in her arm and side. The tooth mark scars are seriously spectacular, and I could hear the medics giving her a lecture about stressing the recently-healed wounds too much.

Sen, trailed by Ys and Rye, showed up while I was getting new bandages applied, anxious to tell me that all sorts of boxes were sitting on the floor in our quarters. I told them they were for them, just some clothes and supplies, and did my best to act like it was nothing special. Of course, that didn’t stop Sen from being giggly with delight, nor Ys and Rye from being extremely withdrawn and doubtful. It was mostly clothes, and a selection of shoes, and some hair things and bubble bath.

I was so out of it from the medicking session that I just lay on the couch drowsily smiling as they unwrapped it all and worked out what was meant for whom. Fortunately Mara had come with me, since I fell asleep until Kaoren woke me.

We ate in our rooms, and then played the spelling game, and since Rye beat his previous score (Ys technically won the game, but came even with her previous score, and Sen was wildly silly), Kaoren told him he could choose a treat and Rye asked if we could go visit the island again, so that’s what we’re going to do the day after tomorrow and if it’s a warm day we’ll give the kids their first swimming lesson since while Nuri might have had rivers and streams, swimming apparently wasn’t common. Talking about swimming prompted one of my rare recommendations to KOTIS Command, namely that eight thousand children and a lake was going to be trouble in Summer. The bluesuit I spoke to told me they’d look into it.

Since my drowsiness wasn’t going away, Kaoren took over story reading duty for the night, and I sat with Sen and fell asleep and now of course it’s the middle of the night and I’ve just woken up.

Wednesday, September 10

The Plains of Telezon

Really enjoyed today, even though we didn’t find what we were looking for.

It started out well, too, with Rye asking questions over breakfast – some of which I suspect Ys was feeding him over the interface. They both get up really early and read the news feeds – which sure isn’t something I ever did at ten – and there’d been a big story about Mesiath, which led into a nice little discussion about the handful of settlements on Muina.

Sen, after insisting I do her hair, briefly appeared in one of her pretty new sun dresses, but re-emerged later accompanied by Ys and Rye, all three in the standard-issue clothes that all the Nurans have. I should have thought of that – the teachers would let me know if there was any open hostility, but I’m sure Ys and Rye are doing their best to keep a low profile about the unexpected privileges of their new life. The Kolaren clothes work as a kind of school uniform, I guess.

I’d bought Kolaren hats for all of us, and sunburn cream, and presented Kaoren with his during the kids' bath time. He’d tried it on agreeably, but said that the Setari uniform was being reviewed for out-of-Ena work. And this morning, when all the squads met up before the mission, Maze gave us a new suit configuration, one designed for warm-weather travel rather than fighting in the Ena. The black nanogoop obligingly reformed into light cream and grey cloth, tight-fitting only around our feet, chest and forearms (to support suit weapons), with wide hoods we could pull up to keep off the sun. The cloth is a layered loose weave designed to breathe, and the overall effect is similar to the formal robes Tarens wear to weddings.

I knew the nanosuits could simulate different textures, but I wish they’d told me earlier that the nanoliquid can change colour – not to mention I wish I’d thought of a hood when I was in the desert turning into a lobster. The Kolarens have started using the nanoliquid uniform when they’re based at Pandora, and seeing all three worlds' Setari in cream and grey made me wonder if they would think of themselves as Muinan Setari, or whether they would have preferred a way to set each other apart.

I had a ton of trouble paying attention to the mission briefing because it had occurred to me to picture the Setari all in a different coloured uniforms, and perhaps flying giant mechanical lions. The possibilities of anime costume transformations opened up to me, and it was only through an Act of Sheer and Implacable Willpower that I didn’t drop shrieking to the ground in the middle of the briefing because the mental image of Maze pirouetting gracefully and ending up in a Sailor Moon outfit was just…

So, anyway, it’s lucky the mission was non-complicated – we were simply to go to one of the platform towns and cast about in a large spiral trying to path find marbles, Cruzatch, other platforms, etc. There’s a limit to the distance which Telekinesis and Levitation talents can haul about their entire squads, so if there’s no result within their range out of any of the towns they’re going to have to do the same exercise using shuttles and just cast further and further.

Muina is, I think, a little bigger than Earth, with the land and water more mixed together, and there’s just no way even a dozen squads would be able to effectively scan more than the tiniest part of it. But the platform towns give us a starting point, and it will handily combine with useful survey work, and – mainly – there’s no better suggestions.

Since the areas around the platforms are relatively safe areas most squads are going single with a Nuran or two to keep them company. First and Fourth are going paired each time, plus Inisar, because they’re taking me with them. Maze is back on duty (though Zee was monitoring him for strain) and only Mara was left behind.

Our first assignment was at a place the old maps call Telezon. A rare town not planted on a lake, it was surrounded by golden grassy plains crossed by a winding, twisting river in the centre of the largest land-mass.

The grass had recently set seed in plumes of purple and white which scattered like dandelions puffs whenever the wind took a punch. And all of it was completely seething with small birds and massive dragonflies, as we discovered when we set down for the first time and ten million grass-gold birds took off in a storm of wings to give a Midas touch to the sky.

We couldn’t fly about constantly – we went out on a long curve from the village, then set down to walk along by the river so our wings could recover – with some extra recovery time needed for the collective heart attack given by Huge Bird Mass. After that we flew some more and walked some more and found birds and bugs and three different kinds of probably-native predators – including a gold lynx-sized cat which sprang vertically out of the grass to snatch a bird out of the air – but no Evil Lairs.

It was a full-day assignment – we brought lunch with us and left at that time zone’s sunset, reaching Pandora early afternoon. All I had to do was listen in case I heard the Ddura in any other direction than the town, which I didn’t, so the day was pretty much a tourist trip to me.

Mara was on the patio playing handball with the kids when we all trooped in, sweaty and slightly sunburnt despite our best efforts. We were the second group back and as we headed to our rooms for showers Mara told the kids to help her and the support staff bring out dinner, and I was pleased and relieved when they reacted positively – not as servants, but as accepted members of an extended and very unusual family. Kaoren and I had a cold shower together, and then a hot one, and then we all watched a second sunset.

None of the squads found any malachite marbles, but the day did wonders for my morale. I was, in my usual self-absorbed way, mildly suspicious that this series of light assignments was the result of a few "Stray’s mental health" reports recommending a break after the Cruzatch attack, but I overheard Maze say to Zee that he wanted to rotate more of the squads who’ve been working the rotations on Tare through, and gave myself a mental kick up the ass for overlooking a hundred or so other people who could use a day in the sun.

Thursday, September 11

Family Outing

Today started out with a near-argument with Kaoren, who’d made an appointment for me to go to medical to have my bandages checked. I’m not supposed to get them wet for long periods after a cosmetic treatment, so yesterday’s long shower and the idea of a swimming trip had been worrying him. I told him I didn’t think it was necessary, and he paused, then said: "It isn’t a request, Cassandra."

He meant, of course, that it was one of those times when his job and our personal life were in conflict – he has to be bossy about my health, and I knew that but I still snapped "Fine," and stomped off with a complete lack of grace, and then hated myself and sent him a "Sorry, not your fault," text.

He texted back, "Improbably sweet. J"

Tarens have immensely complex emoticons and I’m less surprised that their smiley face is much the same as our smiley face than I am that Kaoren would use one. He made me laugh, anyway. Next time I consider having a hissy fit because I’ve been sent to medical for the thousandth time in the last ten months, I’m going to remind myself that for the Setari, medical has been a constant through their entire lives. Years and years of scans, bruises, strains, and broken bones. That’s part of what being Setari is: a necessary part of honing yourself into a weapon. All that even before they start fighting monsters.

Of course my good intentions wavered when Ista Temen tut-tutted the idea of going swimming, took off my blue goop bandages and said the new skin was in a fragile state. But I must have produced a particularly effective Sad Puppy Face, because she decided she could seal the treatment so long as I stayed in medical a few hours for monitoring. After a full dose of fortifiers I slept until just before lunch, but then was fortunately cleared to go. My skin is vividly pink and tender, and terribly sensitive to temperature, but no bandage.

Currently Kaoren’s not allowed to take me even a short flight away without additional guards – I have to have a handful of Setari within immediate response range – but First Squad made it all a very picnicky kind of guarding. We brought along big hampers of food, and then split up before we ate it – swimming lessons at the central pool and First Squad on the shore of the lake within range of a quick dash. We could occasionally hear the echo of conversation or a splash, but otherwise it did feel like just me and Kaoren and the kids alone on a family outing.

The day was very sunny, but humid and heavy – perfect for wanting to get in the water. We walked about the hill, examining the way the spring welled up, and spotting pippins among the tree roots and some small blue wren-type birds building nests, and then went down to the pool to swim and escape pestering insects. I’d gone for a lycra shorts and t-shirt look for my swimming outfit. I’d just feel way too weird parading about in a bikini, even if I could find one and didn’t have a very strange-looking stomach. Similar clothes for the kids, at least in part to avoid the question of exposing the scars on their backs. Like most of the other Setari, Kaoren was wearing the nanoliquid swimming outfit for a just visiting from the Olympics vibe.

Swimming has been a big part of my life, and watching Ys and Rye grasping the basics of dog paddling made me feel like I was on Earth, and I had to work to not look too goopily teary as they swam back and forth between me and Kaoren until they were comfortable enough to keep themselves up without panicking. Sen was the most nervous of the three, surprising me since she loves baths so much and is so generally brave. She wouldn’t go out of arm’s reach, and a nose full of water sent her clinging to me, but she was happy enough so long as one of us held her.

We moved back into the shallower water to give them a rest, and I told them about how Australia is the largest island on my planet and that most of the people live around the edges of it, and almost everyone learns how to swim there because there’s so much coast and it gets very hot. And then I told them about the people who go swimming across the English Channel, all covered in Vaseline, and about scuba diving and krakens and mermaids. Just like when I was explaining volcanos, the difference between what’s real and not-real about Earth exists in a strange land of could-be because I’m the only person who’s been there. I was highly tempted to try and convince them mermaids were real – would it really be so different from telling little kids Santa Claus is coming? Or tourists to watch out for Drop Bears?

I think Sen would know, though.

That thought made me open a channel to Kaoren to ask how to lie to a Sight Sight talent – or, more to the point, how the people behind the conspiracy on Nuri ever managed to hide what they were doing from their Setari.

"Embed the lie behind a lie," Kaoren said. "While it’s not unusual for Sight to reveal that a person is lying, it is rare that Sight can convey the truth behind the lie. The Nurans saw deception aimed at political gain, and very likely were rarely given a chance to closely question the conspirators. Half-truths can also work – the power stones are shield generators. That is true enough to hide whatever else they can be used for."

Ys and Rye were the most relaxed with us they’ve been so far – not totally without their guard up, but Rye is more and more willing to ask questions and Ys at least spends less of her energy glowering. During their second session, paddling about became less of an ordeal and more of an adventure and they had a little dog-paddle race over to the scary deepest part of the pool by the hill, and then back to us. And their eyes went huge when Kaoren said that next training session that fell on a hot day, he’d see if Fourth Squad could swim from the Setari building to the nearest water landmark, Tupal Rock, which is much closer than our barely visible island.

The pool is cool and shady, all dappled light and the occasional drifting leaf or flower petal, so when the kids started to get tired we went out to the sunnier lakeshore to join First Squad. They’d also been swimming – and were talking about bringing breathers and goggles another time so that they could look to see what the lake was like under water – and our arrival was the signal for lunch, which was tasty and sumptuous, and we all lay about basking on big black rocks to digest and chat and watch the truly spectacular number of birds wheeling over the distant northern bank of the lake. A couple of thin spirals of smoke were visible, further west than our island, and Maze confirmed that the breakaway group had stopped walking on the second day and set up camp near the ducks nesting on the north shore. When storm clouds started to roll in we all felt thoroughly sorry for the Nurans, but of course there wasn’t much we could do but collect up all our scraps and head back to Pandora.

It was a serious storm, breaking in late afternoon – it’s been a while since we’ve had any really rainy weather – and we watched the lightning and the sheets of rain with wincing sympathy from the safety of our snug apartment. We’ve had no specific news on how the Nurans are doing, though one of the Nuran Setari is always off watching them.

Another platform town exploration tomorrow. We’ll resume training every second day once the initial survey has been done on all of them, but all-day flying is too energy-intensive to not schedule in lots of rest days.

Friday, September 12

Nursery rhymes and fairy tales

Kaoren woke me earlier than usual this morning, and held a hand to my mouth so I wouldn’t say anything, murmuring: "Listen."

So I listened, and heard singing: "Thiz li’l piggy had roass biff. An thiz li’l piggy had non. An thiz li’l piggy wen wee wee wee all the way hom!"

Ys. And then Sen, giggling with hysterical delight, just as she’d done last night before story time when I’d been playing silly games with her. I’d sung it in English first, then translated the words, but Sen had vastly preferred the English version.

"Did she log it?" I asked Kaoren.

He shook his head. "They don’t have that function yet. This is from memory."

Ys moved on to Inzy Winzy spida, and then Rown an rown the gar den, her pronunciation off, but word perfect each time, for all that I’d only repeated each rhyme a couple of times the night before.

"They were beaten for eavesdropping on the lessons of the household’s heir," Kaoren told me, and when I glanced sharply at him, added: "A Sight dream. There was no reason for the ban, no law among Nurans that servants should not learn more than how to serve, though it is unusual for them to aspire. The master of the house was cruel, and saw how much they wanted, and so took pleasure in denial. That was my dream – from the master’s point of view, enjoying giving the order."

He had to squeeze me for a while, caught between revulsion and fury. It’s rare that Kaoren has Sight dreams now, but when he does they’re particularly strong, and all day today I could see the shadow of it on him. And he’s furious, because the two of them are so very smart, and someone thought it fun to hurt them.

When we made a noise, Ys immediately stopped singing, so we went out and pretended it was just another morning. Over breakfast our explanation for why we’d be later back today led to a discussion of time zones and planetary rotation and we spent a lot of time in a shared space showing them my log of golden plains, and looking at a gorgeous room-sized image of Muina, pointing out the locations of where we were now, where Kalasa was, where we’d been the day before yesterday and where we were going tomorrow. Kaoren showed them how to zoom in to locations, and different interactions they could do with the globe – and then gave them an exercise to locate and view the two other towns we were scheduled to visit, which made me laugh at him and call him such a captain. But the kids loved being able to make the connection between our calendars and the planet, and just looking at different places in the world – particularly the immensely detailed aerial view of Pandora and the live views from numerous scanners which have been placed around the lake and town.

The storm had died away to another muggy morning, but our mission location was Firiana, a town on the largest of a series of small islands in the next big lake to the east. It was cold and raining there, a constant heavy downpour which didn’t let up for the entire long day. It wasn’t all bad – our hoods were happy to be waterproof and we adapted our uniforms to be partially Taren Setari and partially Muinan Setari and so were quite snug. Just constantly a bit damp.

The islands were home to a lot of long, slender furry seal-things with an odd resemblance to Afghan Hounds. And bigger lake serpents which appear to be the sharks of this world (and fortunately don’t live in the waters Pandora borders upon). They’re about ten metres long, furry, and have a touch of Luck Dragon about them. Possibly they’re relatives of the seal-dogs, but much larger and toothier. All the Setari developed rather odd expressions when we found the seal-dogs, and when we stopped for lunch Glade told me old Taren-Muinan stories about benevolent creatures called surri which would rescue people who’d fallen in the water, and which they’d thought were mythical. Today would be like me finding a flock of griffins roosting at Bondi.

After a long, wet day we reached Pandora a little behind schedule – past sunset – to find Sen fretful and worked up. She’d refused to let Mara read the next chapter of the current story, though she’d been happy and cheerful up to that point. Ys was watchful and withdrawn, and Rye seemed simply relieved that we were both in one piece. Teaching the kids the clock and calendar means they know when we’re late.

My solution was to show them how to send us emails and voicemail, explaining that at least when we’re on Muina, if they need to ask us a question then sending an email is a good way to ask without worrying about interrupting us with a channel request. But I should have thought to send them one, before late became an issue. This Mum thing has a huge learning curve.

After story time was over, Kaoren and I had dinner with Lohn and Mara and discussed our mutual interest in the kids. I squirmed a little because it was so clear that they’d both been aching to have children for I don’t know how long, and it wasn’t till Mara had spoken to me that I’d even thought about their feelings. Lohn is already completely wrapped around Sen’s little finger, and proud as any Dad about how quickly Ys and Rye are progressing with their lessons. And relieved, I think, that the kids are distracting Mara from her frustration at being on sick leave.

Despite bedtime fretting, Mara said it had been a good day. "When I checked on them at lunch it looked to be a drama because they’d been playing with the Muina map, only to be discovered by the other students. Since to those without the interface it looked like three children standing in an empty room pointing at nothing, that not surprisingly produced a little spate of mockery." She caught my eye. "And Ys and Rye reacted as you described, that self-erasing pose, not even trying to explain. Sentarestel’s attempts to defend them were not entirely intelligible – she has something of a temper, you’ve noticed? Fortunately Squad One hadn’t left yet, so I called down Diav and had her use Illusion to show the rest of the students what Ys, Rye and Sen had been seeing."

Mara’s smile took on a wicked edge. "I probably shouldn’t have enjoyed their reaction so much, but one of the more opinionated students has been arguing against any suggestion that they consider the interface. What point tainting yourself, she’s been saying, when the handhelds will do the same thing? That map is a wonderful counter-argument. The girl did, rather feebly, try to suggest that a bigger screen would produce much the same result. Here."

She gave me a log of the scene, and I can’t stop grinning at the image of Rye, pink-faced but determined, lifting his head to say: "It’s nothing alike. It’s a narf to a tarena. Using those little boxes is like crawling in the mud."

A narf and a tarena are – were – apparently two Nuran animals, the equivalent of comparing a slug to an eagle.

"He sounded sorry for them," Mara added. "I think that’s what clinched it. We’ve abruptly gone from only your three here with the interface installed, to a mere six holdouts in all of the talent school – and by the afternoon the other four schools were logging a handful of requests as well. It’s not so big a shift there, but it’s the most progress we’ve had since the initial processing. Those in leadership roles recommending the change didn’t have nearly as much effect as pity from what these children consider their social inferiors."

I bet it was that Karasayen girl arguing against the interface.

"Any overtures?" I asked, not very hopefully, and Mara shook her head. I’ve been bugging the people in charge of the talent school probably a little too much about the behaviour of the other children to the servants in their midst. Other than to try and pry information about me out of them, they’re usually leaving Ys and Rye alone. Not unexpected but the main reason why I’m not sure if the talent school is the right place for them.

Sen they treat very differently, and she’s cheerfully social in her age group for the sport sessions. Of course, Ys and Rye hardly encourage anyone to talk with them either and at this stage aren’t the least bit interested in friends and to tell the truth that’s probably the best thing for the moment. Eventually I’d like to see them with friends, but I want them feeling safe and secure with us first.

Another late day tomorrow.

Saturday, September 13

Tiny steps forward

Finally a new marble. Ninth found it, at the very edge of their range out from the equatorial platform town called Pelamath (the old Muinans were very fond of putting ath in their town names). The area is a bit like those plateaus in South America, though not quite as high I think. Very rainy. Up on top of the plateau it’s scrubby, all bushes and spindly trees, while down below is jungle. The platform town is up top, and they found the marble (or, rather, another set of boastful doors) buried in a notch at the base of one of the sheer sides of a different plateau.

We heard the news before we even left, since Ninth has been working through the time zones in the opposite direction and thus started out around midnight. The terrain at Pelamath makes it rather more challenging than Arenrhon to set up a base of operations to begin investigating and so far Ninth has only placed some drones there. But the idea is to first locate as many of the things as possible, and then start delving into them in the hopes of finding more information – preferably that elusive book Our Secret Plan and How to Foil It.

First and Fourth were assigned to a slightly later time zone to yesterday’s, but southern hemisphere and closer to the pole so we had a short, chilly outing. Mostly fir trees with a few massive yellow-leafed nut trees completely infested by squirrel-types with black fur, tufty white-tipped ears, and long curling tails. Packs of dogs, too, though not border collies, and various deer along with my old acquaintance the Mondo Elk. Not quite halfway through Autumn (we think) and already it felt like snow wasn’t too far off there.

I made a point of calling the kids when we stopped at lunch, and showed them the different animals we’d seen, and some of the prettier streams and waterfalls. Rye definitely has a Shon-level interest in the natural world, and wanted to know what all the animals would be called – which is really anyone’s guess at this stage, although a lot of animals are being casually named for their resemblance to the animals of old Muinan stories. And the border collies are being called border collies, which amuses me greatly.

A channel request to Shon was all it took to arrange a tour of the flora and fauna buildings and a personal explanation of naming conventions. The three of them (and Mara) ended up having dinner with Isten Notra after their tour – and meeting the rest of her family, all of whom arrived just two days ago as new Muinan settlers. I found out about that when Isten Notra sent me an email, warmly amused as usual, but ending up with: "Don’t overlook the brittle fragility of the older girl. Even metal of her quality can shatter after years of strain."

Ys is tying herself into knots, used to being the one who protects the others and makes the decisions, so tempted and distrustful of the life we’re offering her. She hates that Sen lavishes affection on me, and Rye’s deepening fascination with Kaoren must feel like a second betrayal. I spend all my time wanting to hug her and being careful to pretend not to notice when she’s excited and enjoying herself.

I’m glad she met Isten Notra.

I’ll make sure to contact them during our next mission day after tomorrow. Of the fourteen platform towns, First and Fourth are exploring four, while most of the single squads are doing three, so two more for us – and again the next time zone over, which means sleeping in, leaving in late afternoon and not getting back till after Sen, at least, should be asleep.

It’s raining at Pandora again. Inisar says the Nuran splinter group has shelter now, but I bet they’re not enjoying themselves.

Sunday, September 14

Day-Tripping

Pandora’s day started out hot and sticky again – another storm on the way – and since everyone at the talent school is spending their energy trying to deal with dozens of kids with severe headaches, we took the kids off to our island after what was breakfast for us and taught them to float on their backs, and kicking. Rye did very well at this, Ys less so – she wasn’t comfortable with me holding her up while she was floating, but we took a break and tried again and though she was far from relaxed, she did better the second time.

We had Fourth with us instead of First, and Kaoren turned it into a mini training session, leaving Par and Glade (our toter-abouters who he didn’t want to tire out) to sit with me on the bank while he took the rest for a short practice swim.

All three kids are highly curious about Kaoren’s squad, and Fourth are eternally entertained by the idea of him in a dad role. Glade had a huge amount of fun pretending Kaoren worked them to death and was a heartless taskmaster. Sen was outraged and kept saying "No-o!!" in highly doubtful tones at Glade’s increasingly unlikely claims, until she was sure that he was teasing her and then she started giggling madly. Rye, who I think was for a while really furious, finally appealed to me.

"Tough but fair," I said, since my opinion of him as a captain hasn’t really changed. "Kaoren expects people to do their best, but he doesn’t push them just for fun of it." I had to grin and add. "Admittedly, I train with First instead of Fourth."

"You – is it you are to be a Setari?" Rye asked.

"It would take years – decades – to turn me into any sort of fighter. But the basic training comes in handy because using talents strains the user’s system. And, well, you never know when you need some urgent running or swimming. It was definitely embarrassing when Zan – the leader of Twelfth Squad – had to levitate me because I couldn’t keep up with her squad during an emergency."

Before we left I told Sen that she should choose a short story for Mara to read, if she wanted to save the current one for me, and Mara tells me that she was happy with this new arrangement. I’m getting better at this.

Our platform town today was the border collie one, which on the old Muinan map is called Falazen. I asked Maze if I could bring a snack along for the dogs (partially to tease him) and ended up having a rather serious conversation with one of the fauna technicians, who wanted to know more about how dogs are used on Earth. Teasing Maze is not nearly so much fun if the end result is a meeting.

The Kolaren farmer who is in charge of the hairy sheep was also there, allowing me to demonstrate my ignorance of sheepdogs AND sheep. To cover the gaps, I did a short projection of some collies herding as a farmer controlled them with whistles. The technician has been conducting a study of the dogs, observing them through drones, and was full of talk about their intelligence and social set-up, and wasn’t very keen on the Kolaren’s suggestion that we do a bit of puppy-napping. But they agreed that regularly bringing food gifts to the dogs was a usefully non-confrontational step toward redomestication.

So we took doggy snacks with us (well, a bag of dried chips of vat-grown protein) and laid them out on one side of the amphitheatre under the watchful eye of the two collies which were guarding the place (the technician told me that there’s always at least one collie keeping an eye on the place). The chips were gone when we returned at the end of the day, so I guess it was a suitable offering to Falazen’s current owners.

It was an uneventful day in terms of exploration. The land around Falazen is very like Pandora, although with a somewhat different selection of animals, and dominated by a pale-barked tree just setting out leaf-tips. Lovely displays of spring flowers below them, too. Other than the mild disorientation of getting up mid-morning and travelling about until late evening, and the fact that the Telekinetics find days like this a strain, I’m still really enjoying this stretch of missions. It was late afternoon for the kids when we stopped for lunch, and I showed them where we were, and pictures of the flowers, and the dogs.

Flying and walking about half the day isn’t doing my sex life any good, though. Kaoren usually flies himself, and the effort of that means he’s very tired by the time we’re ready for bed.

Monday, September 15

Where Now?

Raining a lot at Pandora today, so I spent my late morning playing games with the kids while Kaoren was off at a Captains' meeting. There’s an endless array of games available for them to play – some free, but a lot with a tiny purchase fee which either Kaoren or I have to approve – and we played through a heap of trials to decide which ones they wanted. I won some Mum-cred by being better at random games than I am at spelling in Taren, and I made sure Ys and Rye picked at least one game each which catered more toward their own age group, rather than entirely to Sen’s tastes. Ys picked what amounted to a junior adventure game, like the historical games I’ve been playing, so I showed them those games, and warned them they might be a little complicated but that I thought they were tremendously interesting because I’d learned so much about Taren history from them.

Then it was off to the southern hemisphere again, though this time not so far south, so we found deciduous trees all shifting into Autumn – primarily a gorgeous translucent yellow, with occasional masses of orangey-red standing out like beacons. This town was quite close to the ruins of another, larger, settlement, and the whole landscape was quite spectacular – lots of whitestone ruins tucked among sharply up and down hills which had at one time been terraced for farming but now had been overtaken by trees, and also these massive (taller than me) bushes which were covered in a white-gold fruit. Tiny brown and black striped pigs kept shooting out of the undergrowth, and huge flocks of birds were feeding on the fruit and seemed completely fearless, moving away only when we were within hands reach. We brought a few samples of the fruit back for the technicians to test, but no more tangible result.

So in all of the past week, one marble. It’s not been wasted effort, of course, since our trips have basically amounted to wider surveys of the terrain about the platform towns which are almost certainly going to form the major hubs of civilisation on Muina. But we’ve barely scratched the surface, and further surveys will be much harder, since they will be outside the zones reliably kept clear of Ionoth by the Ddura. They’re going to trial a low-flying drone to see if they can spot any of the grand doors which have marked two of the sites.

Needle, meet haystack.

Ninth and Sixth flew out today by ship to the site of the one marble discovered, and they’re going to support the initial establishment of a research site. Until they’re able to access the platform (since there is apparently a platform in there) and call the Ddura, there’s going to be a fair bit of Ionoth-clearing involved. We have tomorrow as a break, and I’m looking forward to lazing about.

Wednesday, September 17

Pricing Fame

Kaoren is very sneaky. He’d been deliberately vague about plans for our day off because he’d managed to get permission for us to retrace my course to try and find where I’d first arrived on Muina. This was a good deal more of an undertaking than a jaunt across to our island since it could take us out of range of the Ddura’s primary hunting ground (it does hunt beyond the four-day’s walk range, just rather unpredictably) and we would need fliers and greensuits and rather a lot of Setari.

And, of course, convincing KOTIS Command that no, really, Cassandra won’t leap through the gate back home the instant she sees it.

The trip itself was anti-climactically easy, since Kaoren had planned the route using the information from my diary. We whizzed off along the lakeshore until we reached the river, and then followed it to the easily-recognisable rock in the middle of the river where I’d spent a day being sick (I’m not likely to ever forget it). Kaoren used that landmark as an estimate for how fast I was travelling on foot and we zoomed along the river until the point he’d calculated would be around the area where I’d come out of the hills and then we lifted up and looked for a hillside clear of trees, the old burn-off with a stream where I’d spent the second night.

There was one clearly obvious place, and we set the fliers down there so I could confirm that it really did look like the place I remembered. After ten months they didn’t have much hope of Place Sight being able to detect any real impression of me, and so weren’t surprised not to find any. Even though it looked different in Spring, I was sure it was the right place – and confirmed that by finding my muesli bar wrapper by the stream. Convenient, though I felt bizarrely guilty to be caught littering.

It was a struggle trying to remember what direction I’d come from, but we took a guess and coasted slowly over the hills until Inisar spoke up to correct our course and guided us straight to a place which from my point of view might or might not be the spot where I first stepped on to Muina, but which everyone with Gate Sight said was the site of an unaligned natural gate.

They couldn’t say with absolute certainty how long it would take for the gate to align – Inisar said it was responding to my presence and that was very likely the reason it had opened at all, but that it did not feel even close to aligned to him, and was unlikely to stay aligned for long if it did open. Before the embarrassingly short flight back, we set up a drone which will monitor the gate, tracking fluctuations in hopes of predicting when it’s ready to align.

And that was it for the dramatic rediscovery of my way home to Earth.

Most of my energy went into being completely clear that I have no intention of leaving. I’d love to visit Mum and Dad, but I’m not going to risk being trapped away from Kaoren, Ys, Rye and Sen. It’s not even hard to make the admission. They are my life now.

To be sure those without Sight Sight were completely clear on that, I kept talking about "sending a letter". If the gate goes to roughly the same area on Earth, I can put a letter in something waterproof and say "Please post me" on it, and the chances are at least moderately good that someone will post it. I have five stamps in my wallet, ready for intergalactic special delivery.

That’s something for the future (though I can’t help but spend half my time mentally composing letters). The rest of the day we played sports with the kids – I taught them French cricket with a rather uneven bat, and teased them about being the only people in the building I had a chance of beating in handball. A fun, relaxed and mildly silly afternoon in other words, reminding me very much of family holidays back on Earth. Sen has got to be the most indulged child on the planet, and Rye’s idea of heaven has become the tiny nod Kaoren gave him when he scored a lone point in their handball match. Ys is still being wordlessly polite and totally guarded – doing a good imitation of a Kalrani among superior officers – but I spotted her enjoying herself once or twice despite her best efforts.

Maze vanished for a while during the afternoon, and when he came back took me and Kaoren aside to talk about The Hidden War. The current season had wrapped up recently, very dramatically with kitten-me vanishing after being stood on the platform at Pandora, and production was now on a break. I hadn’t actually been reviewing the episodes, relying on Maze to warn me if there was anything upsetting, but now they’d reached the stage of wanting as complete a detail of everything which happened after Kalasa as I was willing to allow.

Maze already had a fairly complete summary which someone had prepared of my assignments and injuries and major Setari and me-related events (lots of Cass having nightmares and having to be babied). The proposal suggested by the producers was that their writers read the summary, and come up with questions for me about more detail they’d really like, and an outline of the direction they want to take each episode, and I either give them information or object to bits I can’t stand, and then they write up a proper script and the process goes through again. They’re offering me huge amounts of money (even more than the Kolarens were, which is saying something). Money is so weird and abstract for me here, since I have more of it already than I’ve ever had in my life, and I hardly need to touch it.

Because of the differences between the fictional story and the real story, I’m not sure it’s really a good thing to feed them information. There’s no way for them to properly portray my relationship with Kaoren, not with how different Lastier is from him, and so to a degree it seems pointless to me to try and help make it slightly less inaccurate. KOTIS plainly wants me to do it, but I’ve been hanging back on agreeing.

And then there was the extra request. Instead of filming my Kalasa ordeal, The Hidden War’s producers want to buy the mission tape from KOTIS. To take my log and simply broadcast it, right up until my rescue (or, well, until I passed out before I was rescued).

"Why would I want that?" I asked, shrugging off the prospect of even more money. "Why would KOTIS want that?"

"For KOTIS it’s simple – the log doesn’t tell anything more than what everyone knows, but releasing it undercuts the belief that we’re not being completely open and honest about events. Not that anything other than the more worrying theories are currently being held back, but since the destruction of Nuri suspicion has reached sky-breaking level. There isn’t a great deal of motivation for you, other than allowing people to see who you really are."

"I’m not sure all the whimpering and crying I did is how I want to present myself," I said wryly, and told him I’d have to think about releasing the log, but I could live with the other arrangement since it’s obvious that a lot of people are still treating The Hidden War as the Gospel of Devlin.

It surprised me that the military could sell the right to broadcast its records, and asked Maze whether it would be simpler to just release the summary information direct instead of filtering it through The Hidden War. And that’s an option. Kaoren is firm on this being entirely my decision. I think he knows that in part I just don’t want to look at my log for that period, because it’s hour upon hour of me being scared and helpless and right now I’m avoiding scared and helpless.

I might be firm about wanting to stay, but locating the gate to Earth left me with a bad case of nostalgia, so after dinner I asked if I could do some expanded senses projection practice, and recorded some Earth video clips for the entertainment of those squads who were awake after their adventures with time zone adjustment. Just a few songs – Mika’s Grace Kelly and Love Today, and Radiohead’s Exit Music for a Film. It was the first time I’d projected anything in front of the kids, and they seemed very interested – Sen was particularly interested in the piano in the Grace Kelly clip, so I made one for her, and muzzily watched her pound it until I fell asleep, and now it’s almost dawn. We’re heading out in a couple of hours to assist in the opening of the new marble location.

Mmm

Stinky hot weather during the exploration at Pelamath, worse after the violent downpour during the afternoon, which was soon after we arrived since that time zone’s well ahead of Pandora’s. There wasn’t room in the canyon for a camp to be set up – at least not until they eat some whitestone buildings into the canyon walls – so the base camp and ship (the Mesara) was on top of the plateau and the Setari did a lot of lugging people and things up and down because they’re so much quicker and more efficient than the fliers, and didn’t have to be loaded.

Fourth and First (and me) scouted out two other entrances to the underground structure – from initial scans it seems to be set up in much the same way as Arenrhon, just with a slightly different entrance system – and found ancient stairways built into the walls of the cliffs. All terribly crumbly now, and one of the entrances was buried under rubble until Maze cleared it.

The technicians had had plenty of practice at Arenrhon, and had the shielding for the first door ready to be taken down by the time we’d arrived back from marking and clearing the other two. It looks like this is going to be a repeat of Arenrhon, since the interior of the first level was basically identical. Exploration was uneventful, just sad. So many bodies, desiccated and nameless, and crowded again at the entrance. I could see the echoes of their deaths settle on Kaoren with the gentle impact of an anvil – and Inisar and Halla were equally as white-lipped.

We returned to Pandora a little after lunch, since they’ve decided not to risk night work, and Kaoren was stressed enough to need me a great deal. We spent a very long time in the shower, and then decided to wander over to the talent school to see what the kids were doing.

Sen was out by the lake with her age-group class of newly plugged-in Nurans, having a dance lesson. That was fascinating to watch, because not only did each child have their own personal miniaturised instructor, but the interface was projecting robes with long, long sleeves which they could whirl about and make shapes and patterns. It looked wonderful, and though I didn’t join in the dance, I tried out one of the robes, and discovered the wonderful world of projected fantasy clothing. Projected clothing even feels a little like it’s really there, stimulating the sense of touch, though not quite achieving real weight. I am so going to spend hours playing with that.

The day for Ys and Rye’s age group is now split a session of self-study, a group class, a talent class, and a sport class. They were also in the middle of their first interactive game when we looked in, but sadly not one involving spinning about in floaty clothing. Ys and Rye aren’t at all keen on having more shared classes and likely would have preferred to have remained the only students with the interface.

It was great to see the way Rye’s face lit up when he noticed Kaoren. I do think he likes me as well as Kaoren, but he simply worships Kaoren. Ys just ignored us after a long glance. We were a fairly disruptive influence on the attention of the rest of the class, though, so it was a good thing the day’s lessons were nearly over. Collecting Sen as well, we walked back via the top of the hill, where I out-squee’d everyone over the discovery of hummingbirds feeding on the tree’s flowers. They were very tiny and very amazing – something I’d only seen on TV before.

And I’m finally back for our evening routine, so I don’t have to feel guilty about using Mara as a babysitter. She’s itching to be shifted back to active duty, and will probably be cleared soon. It was a good evening, especially since neither of us were tired, so after Sen had gone to sleep and Ys and Rye had buried themselves once again in the interface, Kaoren and I had a lot of time to be glad to have each other. We also caught up on a chunk of diary reading, reaching the big assembly of Setari being told about me. It was the second time I’d met Kaoren. It seems like an eternity ago, when he was merely one of the huge array of new people I was dealing with, and I was just a curiosity to him.

Thursday, September 18

I Spy…

Today was a poke Devlin at it day.

We were up early again and off to Pelamath, where they’d already opened the second and third levels and were working on the difficult fourth – the idea being to work our way quickly down to the bottom and turn off the shielding – and then erect a KOTIS-approved shield in a bubble over the top of the marble, so that no Cruzatch can use it to come through.

The place had a different set of gods, two men and a woman, another three entries into House Zolen’s pantheon. I still can’t decide if they really deliberately turned themselves into Cruzatch, or if it was some terrible error. I mean, who schemes to turn themselves into floaty burny things?

There’d been a lot of back and forth discussion about whether I should be involved at all, since it would be possible for the Cruzatch to mount a raid through the malachite marble, but they eventually decided on a brief visit after the power stone had been used to turn off the shielding.

This meant a lot of sitting about for me, slathering myself in the insect repellent which is a particular necessity for the Pelamath area, though we’ve been using it during our other exploration trips. I had a rotating series of guards, and chatted to some of the technicians I hadn’t seen since Arenrhon, who all seemed to want to tell me about some individual discovery they’d made, some piece of information about Muina’s past which had touched them particularly. These conversations are occasionally surreal, particularly when people I haven’t talked to before stammer or blush or grin madly. I’ve learned to pretend not to notice but it –

I started to write that it makes me feel as fake as wearing the Setari uniform, but realised that I no longer feel like I don’t belong in the uniform. Not since Kalasa, I think, when I was just so glad I had it on.

My involvement at the Pelamath installation was to be limited to a quick trip down to the two lowest levels just so they could record which objects were blurry, and any other random observations I had. Which was straightforward enough – and I’m getting better at handling the blurriness – but then it got confusing because the blurriness started to resolve.

I kept seeing the same place, but with all the dust and grime gone. And when they told Fourth to bring me back up to the surface, I kept getting flashes of the other floors with all the corpses gone, and people moving about in a businesslike way (most of them favouring an Egyptian kilt look). When we made it out to the canyon, the stairs looked sharp and clean. The technicians were all fascinated, and had me go back in and tour about the unsealed part of the upper floors until my old friend Pounding Headache showed up and bought me a ticket back to Pandora.

The most popular theory is that the power stones had such a strong impact that it imprinted the past on the area, allowing me to see the place before their activation. But I don’t know if that’s right, and Isten Notra pointed out that the peripheral vision world I was seeing while in near-space was similar but different.

Alternate reality? As if this wasn’t confusing enough.

I recovered quite quickly from my headache, which is an improvement, though I was still sentenced to an entire afternoon in medical for brains scans, and very annoyingly a lot of blood and tissue samples once again. Tomorrow they want to try taking me close to the Kalasa power stone, which doesn’t have any sarcophagi, to see whether it will let me have more glimpses into Kalasa’s past, since seeing without projecting is far less energy-intensive for me. Well, that’s the current plan unless someone in KOTIS Command changes their mind again – they’re so wary of using me. But all the news reports today have been about the increasing density of Ionoth in Tare and Kolaren near-space, which has led to more incidents of Ionoth reaching real-space and thus a spate of deaths. I’m guessing Kalasa will be a certainty.

Friday, September 19

Urgent Relocation

Back on Tare. I never cease to find new ways to have a crisis.

This was another dreaming problem. I’d barely gone to sleep the night before last, and was having a confusing dream about being trapped under something heavy, when Kaoren woke me up. I occasionally have dreams about being trapped under things because Kaoren has rolled on top of me, and hadn’t really felt anything different about this one other than the fact that Kaoren had woken up instead of me, but he said he was feeling extremely uneasy about me, and that my vitals monitor was showing a slower than normal heartbeat. He wanted me to go sleep in medical attached to the scanner, which I wasn’t keen about at all, but I could see he was really unsettled, so I checked all the kids were asleep then went along just to spare him the stress, and felt tremendously guilty about having to wake up Ista Mezan (this week’s primary medic) just so he could watch me go to sleep. He was very nice about it, but looked so tired.

I was pretty tired myself, so went to sleep quickly, and started having another dream about being trapped under something heavy. It didn’t exactly feel like one of my real dreams, and my head felt very vague and I just lay there until it grew clearer, not that it ever really grew clear. There was a mistiness to everything – fog – and I seemed to be in a dark place with a narrow light directly above me, making the thin tendrils of fog glow, and I could make out different pinpoints of light to either side, and some kind of pattern in the ceiling. I couldn’t move, couldn’t turn my head, couldn’t lift a finger, couldn’t speak, didn’t even really feel like I was breathing. I didn’t feel at all like myself.

And there was whispering. Lots of words on all sides of me – or on me. It felt like there were tiny incredibly heavy people sitting on top of me, whispering. I couldn’t make out what was being said, beyond that it had the zeddy noises common in Taren and the other Muinan dialects.

I didn’t like it at all – I felt so small and helpless and constrained – and started trying to wake up and couldn’t. I knew it had to be a dream, but the easy ability to wake out of my dreams seemed to be gone. I tried sitting up, and still couldn’t move, and tried creating a projection of an Ionoth Kaoren to free me, and nothing happened, and then I panicked, in a futile and unproductive way. I couldn’t even feel my heart beating.

The only thing left I could think to do was try and sense whether there was anyone nearby who might help me. I began pushing my senses out, but even that didn’t work properly, and I felt like I’d fallen down a well – or up a well – and then I snapped back to staring at the ceiling. That wasn’t a very nice sensation.

But it was the only thing I could do, and I was by that time out of my mind desperate, so I kept pushing out, pushing and pushing and falling up this well but I felt like I was a rubber band stretching too thin.

And then I was me again, trying to gasp and choking because there was a tube down my throat. And still heavy, like there was an anchor hooked to my spine. Ista Mezan said something in a high, relieved voice and then helpfully pulled the tube out (horrid sensation) and then Kaoren was in reach and I got hold of him and just gasped and shook for a minute or two. Ista Mezan did his best to get a physical assessment of me without prying me off.

Kaoren’s heart was beating really fast, and his voice was even but unusually flat as he explained that my heart rate had slowed soon after I fell asleep, and then plummeted – the time between beats increasing exponentially. So far as they could tell, I’d stopped breathing altogether, with barely a flicker of brain activity. They’d hooked me up to a machine for breathing and tried waking me with an alarm over the interface, and Inisar had tried speaking to me telepathically, and they were debating shooting me full of stimulants when I’d revived as abruptly as I’d gone. I’d been not quite dead for nearly twenty minutes.

Having said that, Kaoren gently detached me and had me lie down so Ista Mezan could take better readings. Another technician, and Maze, Inisar and Zee were in the room, all of them grim and tense.

"It hasn’t ended," Inisar said, watching me narrowly. "What did you dream?"

My throat hurt – I really don’t recommend tubes – and I had to swallow a few times. Maze brought me into a channel (which had Isten Notra and the settlement commander and another bluesuit in it) and I spoke in there instead.

"I was somewhere I hadn’t seen before, a dark misty place, and I couldn’t move. I don’t think–" I struggled to understand the whole thing. "I don’t think I was dreaming. That was nothing like my dreams."

"I’m not finding physical damage, but energy output is significantly elevated," Ista Mezan said. "She’s actively using a talent."

"I’m trying not to go back. I feel like there’s a heavy weight pulling me," I said, wanting to clutch Kaoren some more. He slid his hand into mine, and I risked a glance at his face and saw that it was like stone, his eyes nearly shut.

"Recommendations?" Tsaile Staben asked, voice very clipped.

"It seems more likely to me that it is a response to the second exposure to a power stone, rather than some form of attack," Isten Notra said. "In either case, distance is the only obvious response. Get her as far from the power stones as possible."

Tsaile Staben told the other bluesuit to arrange a ship, while Isten Notra asked: "Caszandra, can you describe the place you saw in any more detail?"

"Not properly." I thought about it, then: "Can we go outside? I want to try and project where I was, and there’s not enough room here to see it."

"But–" Ista Mezan started, but stopped. What could he tell me, after all? That I needed to get some rest?

Maze was looking sick, and Zee’s mouth was a flat line, because they could see why I didn’t want to wait. Kaoren just picked me up. He knew I wouldn’t suggest something like that unless I thought it was important.

The nights are still cold at Pandora, and the sky was very clear. Maze brought along a drone and we followed the path down to the lake’s bank. I was struggling with feeling dizzy – moving about didn’t agree with me – but at least the dizziness made it easier to resist falling back asleep. The projection was unexpectedly easy to do, and not as distressing as I’d feared since Kaoren kept me snug against his chest the entire time – and this time it wasn’t me lying unable to move.

It was a big room, made of blackish stone and lit not only by the balls of light in the ceiling, but the mist which filled it, which I belatedly realised was aether. The stone walls were covered in carvings, reminding me vaguely of circuitry, and there was only one thing in the entire place – an altar or platform or bed – a waist-high carved rectangle of stone on top of which a black-draped humanoid figure – tiny, no bigger than Ys – lay beneath a scattering of round, green stones. Little malachite marbles.

"I think it’s her dream," I said, shaking from the effort of maintaining the projection and just…sheer horror. "It’s the ceiling I wanted to show you."

"Spread out so we capture as much as possible," Maze said, and he, Zee and Ista Mezan moved, looking upward through the aether. Inisar was staring at the shape of the girl under the dust-fragile black drapery, and Kaoren knew better than to shift about when I was projecting. They didn’t even make it to the far end of each room before I had to let the projection fade. Isten Notra ordered Ista Mezan to give me stimulants and we went back inside.

"Ship will be ready in ten joden," said the second bluesuit, as I was getting another quick examination and a couple of injections. I hesitated over the fortifier Ista Mezan handed me, since they always make me sleep, and Kaoren told me to drink just a little and to bring it with me.

"Let me wake the kids," I said, as Maze and Kaoren sent alerts to their squads, and Kaoren gently lifted us both back to our quarters. I could stand on my own, though it made my bones feel achy, and Kaoren watched me carefully a moment, then went and packed with his usual extreme efficiency.

Ys woke at the slightest touch, and I told her to wake Rye and then sat myself rather heavily on Sen’s bed and prodded her gently awake. I think Sen knew straight away – she climbed into my lap and hugged me madly and then was quietly mature in the way she gets when she’s being driven by her Sight.

"We’re going to Tare," I said, once they were all awake enough to take it in. "Mainly because my talents now acting weird, and best to get me away from Muina until better understand what’s going on. I need you three to get dressed and pack belongings – use your pillowcases to put them in – so that we’re all ready to get on ship. Can you do that?"

I hated to see Ys and Rye’s reaction, all sense of certainty stolen away in seconds, and then their expressions shutting down. But they nodded and hurried to do what they were told. I helped Sen get dressed, and sent her to the bathroom while I packed everything I could reach without having to move about too much. Kaoren was soon there with a proper tote bag to pack their crammed pillowcases in, and his calm and restrained approval swept them along. Mara and Ketzaren showed up and whisked them and our bags away so Kaoren could pick me up again. We flew inland to the flat acres of whitestone which was now Pandora’s barebones spaceport. First and Fourth, Inisar, Ista Mezan and a couple of his minions, all together in a hushed and grim group: Mori wide-eyed and dismayed, Lohn with his jaw set, no-one wanting to talk. I couldn’t pay a great deal of attention because I was all dizzy again and very nauseous.

The ship was the Diodel, and Kaoren took me straight to the small medical section. He let the technicians have me so I could try to explain why I was looking so green, and went to make sure the kids were settled, coming back just before takeoff and dryly saying: "She understands that," to stop one of the technicians fussing about how if just getting to the ship had made me dizzy, ship travel would be worse.

I could tell that they were treating this as super-urgent because the tedious pre-flight checks were cut short to critical systems checks only.

The medical station has two sick-pods, and a room to one side with more ordinary pods, but Kaoren and Ista Mezan ignored the everyone strap in for takeoff protocol and stood with me as the ship lifted, paused, then zoomed forward. And I went grey, green, then vomited extravagantly in the well-placed bucket Kaoren had snagged from the medical supplies. I don’t remember much of the journey to Muina’s rift, given that my brain seemed to be tumbling in free-fall the entire way and I spent all my energy dry-retching and shifting about because I kept having really weird muscles spasms. It did mean that it wasn’t difficult to stay awake, but by the time we reached the rift (it sounds like we went at record speed) all I wanted was to be knocked on the head. The whole time I could feel something pulling me down.

Kaoren wouldn’t let them close my pod when heading into the rift, and stayed standing with me despite a high chance of getting a dose of aether, which was fortunate because apparently I had a fit and passed out briefly – I don’t remember that, just this incredibly awful sensation like my insides were all staying on the far side of rift. By the time I was capable of noticing more than that, the technicians were talking in very relieved tones, and I no longer felt dragged down. Awful in many other ways, but whatever connection I’d established to the malachite marble or whatever the hell was going on with me had been broken.

I was totally drained, and just lay for a while letting them give me injections and take brain scans, but then asked if I could have a shower (I stank of vomit and was mortifyingly sure I’d wet myself as well, which thankfully my nanosuit was containing). Nanosuits are tremendously useful for having medical emergencies in, since the technicians can make bits of it go away and come back so easily. Kaoren came and had a shower with me, which got around the technicians worrying I would collapse and gave us the opportunity to be all scared and upset with each other for a while. He’d had to spend the entire time not showing how frightened he was, and we ended up sitting on the cramped floor of the shower cubicle, squeezing each other and shuddering. We were still in the shower when we went through into Taren real-space, and I decided that, however exhausted I was, I’d rather try and stay awake until we were back at base because I really didn’t want to face the possibility of more vomiting.

Ista Mezan (by then looking almost as exhausted as I felt) told me to finish the rest of my fortifier, but I bargained him into fetching me some real food, and Kaoren went to get my hairbrush, so I was (if you ignored the two other technicians in the side-room) alone when Ys found me.

She marched straight up to where I was sitting sideways on the sick-pod (the unsick pod, in this case, since I’d swapped to the one they hadn’t had to clean vomit off) and said in this angry whisper: "You have to stop."

"Stop which?" I asked muzzily.

I could see she was shaking with anger, and my mild question was apparently the last straw because she had her own little volcanic eruption, all in the same stifled and furious whisper.

"How can you be so selfish? If you’re in danger all the time, why do you keep pulling them closer to you? Don’t keep hurting them just to make yourself feel better. You can’t just decide to be their family and make them love you, and then take it all away. If you’re going to die, then die!"

The enormity of the last one seemed to hit her – she’d gone further than she wanted to say – and she stopped short, gasping for breath. Kaoren, Mara and Maze were standing in the doorway behind her, being very still so she wouldn’t notice them. I really wished I could ask Mum for advice, and touched Ys' cheek, but she jerked her face away.

"Every time Kaoren goes on mission in the Ena, I spend entire time convinced he’s not coming back. But does that mean I shouldn’t love him because he has dangerous job? Would it be better to find someone who lived safer life, even though I like them less? I know that I’m in lot of danger, but if I spend all my time not doing things, not caring about people, because I’m caught up in knowing that I’m in danger, then I’m wasting chance I’ve been given to live. I want to live while I can, even if it’s just for few weeks, or day, or hour."

"Selfish," Ys repeated, voice strangled, and I worked not to look like I agreed.

"I know tonight has been scary. But I don’t think I’d be doing right thing by not hugging Sen, just because might be for the last time, any more than I think would be the right thing to not make sure that you and Rye have never-ending supply of books. Do you know, one of the things I’ve enjoyed most this past week is watching expression on your face when you get explanation for something? It’s like the universe is one massive puzzle to you and thing you like above all else is to fit another piece in place."

That made her stare at me, as if she thought I could somehow have missed something so obvious about her. I added carefully: "And I’m very proud of you for always trying to protect Sen and Rye. You’ll have to forgive me for being just little selfish about wanting to see you smile. I am trying very hard to avoid dying, but if I can’t then I hope all three of you will be able to remember the fun things we did together, rather than just the fact that am gone."

I slid off the over-tall med-pod so I could hug her – which made her go rigid and she beat her fists against my ribs (really hard too) and then briefly clutched at the front of my nanosuit and gulped because she was absolutely determined not to cry. Kaoren came in and put a hand on her head, and told her Sen was looking for her, and knowing him he said just the right things to calm her down a little as he took her off. Mara and then Maze came in and hugged me very painfully (I refrained from hitting them) and I could see that by making speeches about dying I’d succeeded in upsetting both of them rather a lot. Too many of the people they grew up with and cared about have been killed.

Mara made me sit back down and tidied my hair while Maze filled me in on the things I’d missed while I’d been busy vomiting. Isten Notra had begun analysing the images from my projection straight away, and said the patterns on the ceiling were almost certainly related to the patterns we’d seen on the diagram of the Pillar placement. It didn’t seem to be, as I had half hoped, a map to the location of all the malachite marbles, but she said it was important anyway.

Ista Mezan came back with a cup of hot green soup at the same time as Kaoren, Inisar and Zee, and I sipped it cautiously as they tried to coax more information about the not-my-dream out of me. I hadn’t mentioned the whispering before that, and they’re going to try and enhance the drone’s audio pick up enough to maybe make out what the stones were saying.

"That another touchstone, yes?" I asked Inisar. "The one think was involved in disaster."

"Most likely. You said you didn’t think that was your dream. Could it have been hers?"

I didn’t know the answer to that. "It felt like trap," I said. "But she’s the one caught in it." Thinking about it, remembering what it was like, started to upset me a lot and I nearly dropped my soup down my front until Kaoren steadied the cup. "She can’t be any older than Ys," I said, and was glad when they decided that it wasn’t a good time to push me any more.

Left for the moment alone, Kaoren and I sat together on my med-pod, hands locked together, and I opened a channel to him.

"Sen’s Sights led her to the wrong person."

"No." Kaoren frowned at me. "For what she wants, you and I are exactly right. It becomes, now, a matter for us to protect you. And for you not to fail her. Promise me that, Cassandra. That you will think, and take care, and not surrender to this."

"Live up to her?" I said, and thought he might as well be asking for himself. And probably was.

"Promise me," he repeated, and I did. And I’ll try. But this thing, that room, it scares me. I don’t know if it’s something I can just push on through.

Kaoren carried me out to the common room, where more hugging was had, and Sen planted herself in my lap and fell straight to sleep. I spent a little while telling Rye (and a highly subdued and stubbornly silent Ys) about how great the storms on Tare were to watch and how the planet only had two types of weather: storming and about to storm. Then I fell asleep, of course, but no dreams or heaviness and Kaoren must have pushed them to not keep me too long in medical because I woke in my apartment – with this heavy weight on my chest, which panicked me a moment until I realised it was Ghost. Kaoren was very deeply asleep beside me, and Mara was watching over the kids and pretty much treated me like one when I stumbled out needing breakfast.

My apartment now has four bedrooms and is even roomier than the Muina version. It’s obviously been set up this way for a while: KOTIS thinking ahead. Having a big, strict military organisation trying to anticipate my every need is a very surreal sensation. Sen was loving it, as usual, especially Ghost reappearing, while Ys and Rye have been discovering that the interface is a lot larger on Tare than it is on Muina. It was very funny listening to Rye asking Mara questions about the Song Star Setari program.

The headlines are all full of speculation about me having died, or being near-death, so I guess it’s not really possible to take urgent emergency health flights without someone gossiping about it. KOTIS has issued a denial, which has only produced conspiracy theories.

Although I was marched back to medical for scans, I had a fun time anyway playing interface games with Sen and doing my best to live up to my own speech.

Saturday, September 20

Ties

Great news yesterday. Lohn and Mara have registered to get married. Mara told me when she sprang me from medical. It’s something that they’d always been putting off to after retiring from the Setari (at least in part because of Maze’s wife dying, I suspect), but they’d decided that there was no real reason to. They held a little celebration/announcement party in their quarters, with the old-timers of First and Second Squad and a scattering of others (including Kaoren, me and the kids) which was a very cramped affair, making us miss the common room at Pandora.

Because they’ve been living together for a long time, Lohn and Mara only have to wait two Taren years instead of five, so they’ll be getting married in approximately eight months. I noticed everyone kept a weather eye on Maze to gauge his reaction at first, but then relaxed into wedding talk and future talk. Maze just looked happy and relaxed and pleased for them – and spent quite a lot of time chatting with Ys and Rye (explaining Setari squad structures from what I could tell).

Nils teased me about needing to limit my medical dramas – particularly because he’d woken up well after I’d come back and been hit by all these headlines about me having died, which he says totally put him off his breakfast. The persistence of the stories about me being dead or near death is getting a little silly, and we tried to work out why people were more inclined to believe I was dead than KOTIS' announcement that I wasn’t. I thought the best solution would be a shopping trip, so I could introduce the kids to the wonders of mall life. Maze and Kaoren weren’t very keen, but they did promise to suggest it. Later on Kaoren and I talked rather more seriously about introducing our new extended family to his sister. And then, kids safely in bed, we spent hours having mad, crazy sex, trying to banish the spectre of my heart stopping.

Never one to delay, Kaoren arranged for us to meet with Siame today, cleverly combining it with a trip to the roof to relieve my already-increasing feeling of being locked up. Ys and Rye particularly seemed to find the idea of meeting Kaoren’s sister the most daunting thing about Tare so far. Ys dealt with it by spending a great deal of time making sure Sen was dressed beautifully, her hair carefully braided. She spent a lot less effort on herself, though I’m glad to see she’s willing to wear the clothes I’d bought now that there was no risk of the other Nuran children seeing her. Rye just looked like he had a stomach cramp all morning.

We lucked out on the weather, which was the second sort – about to storm. The sky was clear above, with a huge black bank of clouds off in the distance, flickering with lightning. Siame met us outside the elevator entrance, wearing her Kalrani uniform. She’s nearly forty-five now (fifteen) and looked totally in control and correct, every inch a Setari in the making.

Standing on top of the massive pile of blocks which is a Taren city is enough to take anyone’s mind off social awkwardness. So was the full-on wind. I said it was kite-flying weather, and explained what kites were (though Kaoren wouldn’t let me create a projection of one – I’m not supposed to use my powers for a while). Rye wanted to know whether there was any proper outside on Tare and was I think less than impressed with a complete absence of visible plants and animals. Since the storm started rolling in in earnest we went back down to my apartment for hot drinks.

Siame’s attitude toward the kids was neutral, unconcerned, as she asked them questions about their experiences with the interface, and about living at Pandora. But she didn’t say one single word to me. Since she’s such a powerfully self-confident person, the impression she gave was of forbearance rather than any upset, and I was surprised when Sen abruptly reached out and patted Siame’s hand. It was a clear gesture of sympathy, and Siame broke off in the middle of a question, her face losing all expression.

"Why don’t you show Siame your room, Sen?" I asked.

Sen jumped up eagerly – she’s very proud of her room and particularly the mound of cushions she’s collected from all over the apartment to bury her bed in. Ys and Rye followed, and I kissed Kaoren because he was looking worn.

Kaoren is as protective of Siame as Ys is of Sen, and his long absence on a different planet right on top of him making a major change of his life has shifted her from having a very close relationship to him to being on the fringes. Beneath all that composure she was miserable. He’s spending the afternoon with her – giving her some combat training because he’s now too well known for a casual trip into the city.

The kids and I watched the storm, which hit very spectacularly, with a lead-up of lightning followed by horizontal rain pounding at my window. That was a lot of fun, with all of us in my window-seat and the lights turned down and Sen pretending to be frightened, Ys forgetting not to speak to me because she wanted to know how lightning works, and Rye wondering how any animals on Tare manage to stay alive. I turned it into a research exercise, with all of us looking up information on lightning, and the small number of hardy surface-dwelling animals of Tare’s islands (think armadillos), and the vast variety of cave-dwelling ones, and the efforts the Tarens have gone to to preserve Tare’s land-dwelling wildlife once they realised they were in danger of wiping most of it out.

I love it when the kids get distracted and stop being defensive with me. Tonight, Kaoren and I are going to work through the legal documents for making them (and Siame) our heirs and naming Mara and Lohn guardians in the event of our deaths. Not that we’re officially their guardians, or are likely to be able to qualify for adopting them on Tare, but it’s a step we can make quickly, and next we’ll start investigating the process under the provisional Muinan laws – which are having to deal with the issue of adoptions as a matter of priority.

Maze just emailed me an expanded summary of everything that’s happened to me, and told me to edit in anything I’d like to include. KOTIS is going to add it to my official biography as well as providing it to the producers of The Hidden War.

First and Fourth are back on duty tomorrow (they’ve theoretically been on holiday these last two days), but it’s a training day. It looks like I’ll be training with them, but need to check the arrangements for the kids. Not that Ys and Rye aren’t perfectly capable of looking after Sen and self-studying, but I want them to be children, not babysitters.

Sunday, September 21

Back and Forward

During my days the kids will be attending the Kalrani training school, which didn’t sound like a good plan to me, but Kaoren tells me the school is more than flexible enough to handle them carefully. They’ll spend some time in classes with Kalrani, but won’t have the pressures or intense training intended to turn children into Setari. They didn’t seem upset when they returned today, anyway – Sen is always happy to meet children her own age (or a couple of years older, in the case of the youngest Kalrani) and one of the older Kalrani appears to have been assigned to give Ys and Rye very basic combat training (those stepping exercises), which has delighted Rye to no end. He was so happy when Kaoren told him to show what he’d learned and then spent some time correcting his stance. Ys isn’t nearly so interested in combat, but Kaoren put her through her paces as well, and she went a little pink when he gave her one of his tiny approving nods.

I was floatingly tired from the full-on training Mara put me through and declined the opportunity to have my ability to step back and forward corrected. We played the spelling game again, and all the kids are continuing to improve in leaps and bounds, but when we asked them what treat they would like they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) settle on anything. When it was time for me to read the next chapter of our story I had Ys and Rye each read a couple of paragraphs to start out with, helping them spell out the more complex words, and then finished off the rest myself.

I had to laugh at Kaoren, since I next went and read to him. His response was to have me write him out the English alphabet and start teaching him English as I read. We’re reading through more of my period of being Zan’s trainee, revisiting my struggles to understand the concept of the Ena and what the hell was going on. And just desperately wanting Zan to like me, since she was the only person I knew. It immediately made me email Zan and ask her if she was interested in going swimming together some time (possibly with the kids).

Today I have medical appointments again, while First and Fourth are on Ena assignment and I’m trying not to worry about Mara’s first day back on serious active duty. I finished off reviewing the little history of me which is going to be made public. It’s pretty dry, so there wasn’t anything to object to.

Monday, September 22

Day Trip

Score! The bluesuits decided that some kind of public display of me was going to be necessary to quash the conspiracy theories, and so agreed to me going shopping. Probably the oddest assignment I’ll ever have – a mall visit to foster public calm.

Maze, Kaoren and I had a sit-down after First and Fourth were back from mission yesterday and talked through the technicalities. It’s one thing, after all, to take the kids shopping, but another thing altogether to expose them to the kind of crowds which turned up at Rana Junction. And a large, obvious number of guards would draw attention like a magnet, whether or not they were in uniform.

Eventually they decided on an escort of ten Setari, including Kaoren. We would take a roundabout way getting out of the KOTIS facility, dropping down to the basement levels to a freight shuttle and then coming up straight into the middle of the prime shopping district on the island. Kaoren, Zee and Nils would stay with me and the kids, and the rest of the escort would shadow us in two groups while we shopped, joining up only when travelling between floors and then stopping for lunch. We rather suspected that after lunch too many people would have recognised me for the excursion to continue. The police would be given an hour or so’s warning, but not too much because that would lessen the amount of time for word to leak.

I was all for wearing a blonde wig and dark glasses, except of course that would defeat the purpose and sunglasses are not exactly common on Tare. I settled for plaiting my hair in Sen’s favourite twin-braid style, since it was a way I don’t usually wear it. Mine isn’t long enough to be half so impressive as hers, and I skipped the ribbons, but I still quite liked it and Nils said it was different enough that people would need to take a closer look to be sure.

Nils was part of my near escort because he’s such a good Illusion caster, and Zee because she’s managed to be one of the least-photographed of First Squad. I longed to tease them about it, but since Nils seems to be pretending that he’s never been one to flirt with Zee, or indeed with anyone much, I figured it was best to leave it alone. They’re driving me batty showing no sign of particular interest in each other – I so want to pry and don’t quite dare.

Sen was tremendously excited, of course, and I think Ys and Rye were at least curious. I’d prepared them with a few select kids' shows featuring Taren daily life so they had some idea what it was like. They’re used to Taren-style buildings by now, but one of the big multi-level atriums is something else altogether.

I’d told them we were going to pick out some quilt covers for their beds (they all had standard-issue plain blue), and Kaoren had laid out the rules they had to follow in his usual clear and concise way. He offered up a few rules for me as well, and tweaked one of my braids when I suggested a couple for him in return.

With Nils and Zee taking lead, our trip up from the train was uneventful, with no-one spotting me at all – The Nils Effect means that most people don’t at first glance notice anyone but Nils, and then they’re often busy walking into light poles or rubbish bins. All the double-takes I saw were focused conveniently on him and Zee as we made our way to our first stop, an overwhelming multi-level toy store which stunned even Sen into silence.

"Since you couldn’t think of a treat yesterday," I said, "I figured this would give you some idea. Pick something you like." Ys developed a stubborn look, and I gave her a stern one in return. "We can’t leave till you do, so best get started."

I’m not entirely certain I would have won the battle of wills, but Sen gave Ys no chance of victory, grabbing her hand and almost catapulting her down an escalator to an endless display of dolls. It was a great store. I found a few toys for myself, and wasn’t the least surprised when Sen collected a thousand choices. I made her pick just two, but would buy them the entire store if I had somewhere to put it. She spent a lot of time with these horribly lifelike dolls (and androids!) taller than herself, but abruptly settled on a simple cloth one with a cheerful drawn-on face, and a poseable rainbow coloured thing with long arms and legs and googly eyes.

Rye found a kind of meccano construction kit, which Nils offered to carry (and then sneakily swapped to this humungous ultra-deluxe everything but the kitchen sink version). Ys was very reluctant, fingering a few things when prodded, but still without a choice by the time Sen had finally settled on her two. Kaoren solved this by picking something for her, this ultra-cool crystal statue – about two feet tall – which is made of nanobots and can take on any form you like – either a pre-programmed shape or one you make by treating it as modelling clay. There are hundreds of pre-programmed shapes, some of which sneakily change position when you’re not quite paying attention. Ys adores it. And Ghost spent half the evening stalking it.

We made it through the toy store without attracting attention, at least until we actually purchased the treats and found this girl who was on packaging and delivery service (they don’t really have checkouts at most stores since you can purchase through the interface at any point in the shop). Nils took them up for delivery, and The Nils Effect thoroughly distracted the girl wrapping the items, but when she saw the address he wanted her to deliver the packages to, she went all extra-awed and looked interestedly at the rest of us – and then stared at me and burst into tears.

It is severely embarrassing to have people cry at the sight of you. Sen didn’t like it at all, and attached herself to my leg, and I said some awkward words to the girl, who was apparently just glad I really wasn’t dead. Word spread after that, as we headed to a bed-ware store and successfully had even Ys select a quilt cover that she liked. You could see people gathering in little groups to stare at us and, since we’d deliberately left the image-shield inactive on everyone except the kids, our shopping trip was soon a live-streaming event.

We’d chosen the place we were going to have lunch with care – it had a rear exit which was close to the elevator down to the lower levels – and we had booked a nice big table to fit us all and arrangements had been made to let us escape out the back. The place filled up spectacularly quickly, and it was funny to watch us having lunch from a dozen different perspectives. Fortunately we were able to tuck the kids far enough back that they could barely be seen, and of course not recorded. And the city authorities had arranged for security outside, which was a good thing, since an impressive crowd gathered. I felt sorry for disappointing them by sneaking out the back, but not even slightly tempted to go out there.

Sen likes her quilt cover (a seascape) enough to release her hostage cushions, and with the addition of two dolls and the latest in her ever-changing array of colourful public space designs, her room is beginning to look definitively hers. Ys and Rye both set their treats out in their small lounge/play area, and have been sharing between the three of them. Nils told me later that there’d been a lot of private channel discussion over whether the kids would be too overwhelmed if everyone bought them gifts, as our escort had been sorely tempted to do. He said I was entirely to blame for First and Second Squads' sudden excess of parental yearnings, since they’d had all this practice babying me, but he still seemed to really enjoy showing Sen how to finger paint her room’s public space and then levitating her all over the ceiling so that she could leave virtual handprints up there. I set our main lounge ceiling to look like stars in response (I need to be careful about what appears in public space in our main living quarters, because it has a big impact on Kaoren’s Sights).

Endless amounts of news stories and forum discussions about my brief appearance – including exact details of what I’d bought for the kids. That caused me some angst, thinking that it might cause trouble when we go back to the talent school, but I don’t think never buying Ys, Rye and Sen any presents is the solution to the talent school situation. And, although I really enjoy going out and seeing more of Tare – and just being able to do some hands-on shopping – I don’t think I’ll push for a trip like that again in the near future. People crying at me is dreadfully uncomfortable, and the bigger the crowd outside grew the more I wanted to leave. Today demonstrated the impossibilities of ever giving the kids a normal Taren life, which is especially an issue because right now we don’t know if I can go back to Muina.

The theory they’re evolving about what happened to me is guesswork held together by bubblegum and sticky tape. On the near-certainty side is that these malachite marbles, most likely built secretly by House Zolen, first unbalanced the newly built Pillar network – causing the barrier between real-space and near-space to start tearing – and then triggered the disaster on Muina. On the mostly-guesswork side, they think that House Zolen was either, incomprehensibly, aiming to turn themselves into Cruzatch, or ended up like that accidentally. And that they used the touchstone who existed at that time, the one who created the Ddura, as part of their malachite marble network. Since the malachite marbles are designed to use a touchstone, bringing me repeatedly near to them attuned me to what would count as the control room of the malachite marble machine. Whether that machine still exists, or I was linking all the way back to a thousand years ago, is still up to debate, as is what will happen if I go back to Muina. I might be fine so long as I don’t go into one of the malachite marble rooms. I might be in danger if I go through Kalasa. Or I might drop into another death-spiral of energy expenditure as soon as I’m through the deep-space rift.

Tomorrow I’m scheduled for some very wary projection tests so that they can begin to try and find out whether projection of any sort will give me a medical crisis. They’re not going to decide anything more till after that.

Tuesday, September 23

Disclosure

Nothing dramatic happened during my testing session (which was scheduled in the afternoon after First and Fourth were back from another Ena rotation). It was held in the medical section, rather than out at Keszen Point, and I couldn’t help remembering my nightmares about the Velcro massive, as well as all the lusting I did after Kaoren.

Kaoren ran the session (with Maze and Zee in the next room), and kept me to a brief song projection. They fed me a mild sedative to get me to nap straight away, but I just slept, and fortunately they decided that I was safe to sleep in quarters (though I have a distinct feeling Kaoren’s going to stay up watching me for a while).

He’s reviewing the questions The Hidden War producers have sent back (which are long and extensive and far more than I want to discuss – revolving mainly around how I felt at every moment, and especially when and why I fell in love with Kaoren). Neither of us like the situation with The Hidden War, funny as Kaoren finds the Lastier persona, and we’re well aware that by trying to control it we’re only giving it added legitimacy.

We’re going to fill the questions out together, but we need to decide whether we prefer to tell things which are private, or keep it minimal and have them concoct a romance half the planet will believe is the way things really happened. I still can’t decide about releasing the log of my time in Kalasa, either.

Wednesday, September 24

Privacy/Disclosure

No dramas for me overnight, although Sen did wake up from a nightmare and come climb in bed with us. She was shaky and very upset and I think that’s the first time I’ve seen her really cry. I couldn’t make much out about what she’d dreamed, but it seemed to be about Nuri’s loss, and trapped people. Once she’d calmed down a little, I lay holding her while Kaoren talked to her about controlling the things Sight made you see, and stepped her through one of the visualisation exercises until she fell asleep. She has Sight Sight, Place Sight, Path Sight and Symbol Sight, and an Ice talent, and Kaoren says that unlike Ys and Rye she’s more than strong enough to qualify for Setari training, but that the whole Kalrani program is going to need to be reviewed, both in regard to teaching the awareness of a connection with the Ena, and for the program’s intensity and volume. We don’t know if we can fix the tears, or if everything’s only going to get worse, and thus whether the program needs to be expanded or contracted.

Kaoren also gave Ys and Rye a small visualisation lesson over breakfast, explaining to all three of the kids (and me) how Sight Sight and Place Sight tends to develop at Sen’s age, and how to help Sen through learning to control her visions. Nightmares upon nightmares. We’re going to add the visualisations to story time as a final step, since she’s started staying awake until I’ve finished reading the chapter. Ys and Rye are always very serious about Sen’s welfare, enough so that Ys briefly dropped her non-talkativeness to pepper Kaoren with questions. Kaoren also talked to them about learning how to focus their own connection to the Ena, since being able to do that will immensely strengthen their abilities, and had them try picking things up using Levitation/Telekinesis and then try to sense their connection with the Ena. He explained that it was something most Taren Setari couldn’t do and he was only just learning, but that he wanted them all to try and sense it whenever they were using their talents.

Another training day, with projection work in the afternoon. We went out to Keszen Point this time, and I recreated the first visualisation I’d done, of the museum Kaoren had described, this time with my senses expanded. Then the requisite nap in medical. Going to sleep in the afternoon and then waking up and being groggy till evening is annoying, but it’s preferable to the maybe dying thing. Preferable to the look I’ve seen in Kaoren’s eyes when he’s contemplating what they can and can’t do if this goes wrong.

I had a swimming lesson to wake me up today, at least. I’d arranged with Zan (who is on a completely opposite shift and so had only just got out of bed) to meet me and Kaoren at the pool to give the kids another lesson. We needed three because that pool has no shallow areas, and I knew the sheer formidable depth of it would make it more than daunting for the kids. Their eyes turned to absolute saucers when they looked down into it, and down, and down. But Sen was okay so long as she could cling to me, while Rye’s desire to win Kaoren’s approval only grows, and I don’t think Ys can stand to show she’s afraid of things.

Zan was fantastic with Ys. She’s so calm and non-threatening and small, yet very sure and commanding when she wants to be. And, I think, Ys doesn’t have such a big emotional barrier built up against anyone but me and Kaoren, so was able to concentrate more on the swimming part and less on not giving an inch to me.

The main thing I wanted to teach them was how to get out of a pool, and then kicking and turning their heads to breathe while we held them. Sen was totally unkeen on being face-down in water, and I didn’t push her since she’s only young, just had her practice dog paddle again. Rye’s gained a lot of confidence in the water, and I think he’s enjoying swimming more for its own sake now, and not merely because it’s time spent with Kaoren and earns him approving nods.

After the kids tired, we had them sit on the side of the pool and had a race across and back, which Kaoren won easily. Zan pwned me as well – she’s obviously been practicing hard. Still, I kept up, and it was fun, especially because I briefly had the lead because I dive and do the turn better than them both (though, knowing Kaoren, he’ll have perfected that before our next swim).

Good timing reading my diary tonight, since we’d reached the point where Zan was doing lessons with me in the pool. Kaoren was both very amused at the way I described Kajal and Forel, and hugely unimpressed with their behaviour. If Zan had been too severely impacted by their bullying, it was perfectly possible her distraction could have gotten her squad killed. We had another of our almost-arguments, since Kaoren thought Selkie needed to know, and I was pretty firmly of the opinion that Selkie already knows what both of them are like and that my world would be even more circumscribed if people felt they couldn’t trust me not to replay everything they did in front of me. We’re doing okay with our occasional disagreements – probably because we haven’t yet hit anything where neither of us will give ground. Kaoren had to cede this one – my diary reading is something utterly private between us, and he won’t act on anything I tell him unless I agree to it.

Explaining the Orlando Bloom Meter to Kaoren was about a 7 on the Excruciating Scale, and I was glad to stop reading so Kaoren could catch up on the mass of reports he’s supposed to review. I’m going to work some more on the Q&A thing for The Hidden War, which I’ve decided to answer fairly detailed in some things and not at all in others (particularly questions about the kids). But I think I’ll make it a condition that they have to release the Q&A to the public after they’ve made their episodes. And I’m going to have fun writing up how upset I got because someone stole my personal file and turned it into TV.

Thursday, September 25

Gravity

Again no drama overnight, and fortunately no nightmares for Sen. Breakfast was all about Tare’s endless sunset, and another discussion of planetary rotation. I find it very weird how the day-night cycle on Tare is so long, yet the year so quick. We ended up deep in explanations of gravity and centrifugal forces and the fact that the entire universe is moving.

Ys and Rye seem less reluctant to go to the Kalrani school than they were attending the talent school at Pandora. Not keenly eager, but treating it as a task like cleaning up after breakfast. They’re the neatest damn kids – except Sen, who is mess on legs and has provided me with the challenge of teaching Ys and Rye not to clean up after her. Kaoren or I clean up Sen’s mess, or Sen cleans up Sen’s mess. Theoretically.

I spent the day finishing off the Q&A. There were tons of questions about me and Kaoren, all about when and where and why and how we felt about each other during every single event, and I’m sure that they’ll be disappointed that I simply added dates for when I first felt for him, and when he first felt for me, and when we got together.

Most of the other questions I answered a little more helpfully, although there’s quite a lot of things I would only go to the edge of (not describing the kids, or other Setari, or certain aspects of my talents). I took considerable pleasure describing how upset and violated I’d felt about my file-napping. Kaoren and Maze and probably a whole bunch of other people will review it before it goes to the show’s producers, and I’m sure I’ll regret some of the things I wrote down. I thought for a long time, and then agreed to release the Kalasa log as well. I’m not entirely comfortable with it, but I guess it will stop some of the more exaggerated stories about what I did there, and at least it won’t be distorted by reinterpretation. It saves Se-Ahn Surat from a complete water-logging.

Today’s test was to simply have me expand my senses until my centre went vague, which I did without trouble or incident. Now KOTIS Command is having fun arguments about what the next test should be, and whether they can risk taking me into the Ena, and whether they dare take me back to Muina to see if I can help unravel more of its mysteries. So I’m back where I was before we last headed to Muina, frustrated at not being able to do anything useful, with the need to find a solution only growing more urgent. If there is a solution to be found. First and Fourth had a rough rotation today – a single six-person squad would have been overwhelmed. I’m not very keen to go through all that vomiting again, but having everyone I know fight harder and harder battles until someone gets killed is even worse. I keep checking the news for new discoveries coming out of Pandora, but the most I’ve heard is that the nanite factory is close to activation, and that more of the Nurans are accepting the interface. There’s not even news about the splinter group.

I’m shying away from reading other news at the moment, and have been ploughing through more schoolwork instead. The rate that Ys and Rye are shaping up, they’ll end up passing my Taren school level in a couple of years, which would be a little embarrassing. I keep telling myself I’ve graduated from high school back home, and am about to be paid an enormous amount of money, and there’s no need to study geometry during a galactic apocalypse. And, yet, studying.

Friday, September 26

Ball

Weird dream last night. Not the rush-to-medical type, and not a projection, but a bit like when I was dreaming of Kaoren at Kalasa. I was dreaming of a bunch of children playing, kicking and tossing a ball made of cloth (a hacky sack?) to each other. Dressed in non-tech clothes, which could mean Nurans or old Muinans, and most of them the same gold-brown skin, black-eyed, black-haired type as Kaoren and Sen. There was a girl watching them, standing at the top of some whitestone stairs leading to a walkway, and although physically she was far more like Sen, she reminded me so much of Ys – that fiercely shut down expression, the stubborn don’t-need-these-people attitude. She was dressed a good deal more formally and expensively than the other kids, and I could see her working herself up, until finally she strode down the stairs and into the courtyard area where the children were playing.

They ran. Abandoned their ball and scurried like rabbits through archways and doors, looking genuinely frightened. The girl pretended she hadn’t noticed, and strode chin held high across to another stair, managing to kick the little ball into a muddy patch as she did so. I had to wonder what she’d done to make them so scared of her.

I described the dream to Kaoren this morning, which mainly served to spark a discussion on whether I was supposed to wake myself up from all of my dreams, or just the ones we’ve established are a problem. He wasn’t even sure himself which was the better response to dreams about unhappy little girls, and uncertainty’s a pretty rare thing for Kaoren. Then he told me to write a report up describing in tedious detail everything I’d seen, including any decorations, and style of the buildings and types of plants and clothing. I asked the kids whether Nurans ever played with balls made of cloth, and Rye shrugged and said balls were made of lots of things.

Training, training, training all day. I’m far more toned than I ever imagined being. Mara has recovered really well, although she still has a fair bit of cosmetic work to do to get rid of the scars. The skin on my stomach has settled down, although there’s a faint difference between the new and old skin. Nothing so bad as to need another session.

Today’s test was just another visualisation, with no ill effects, but tomorrow we’re going to go into the Ena so I can attempt to visualise Pandora. Four squads as guards, and they’ve had drones set up out there to scan for any sign of Cruzatch.

We had Siame over to our apartment for dinner. Kaoren wants to have her more regularly involved in our lives to make her feel less excluded. That went okay, I guess – she at least has decided to talk to me now, if only to ask questions about precisely how my talents work, and what exactly was the crisis which sent us back to Tare. That was more detail than I’d given the kids, and I had to be careful not to show any hesitation in letting them know more about what was going on with me. I think it would be harder on them to feel we were keeping the truth from them, than to know.

Sen insisted on showing Siame her spruced-up bedroom. Rye was cautiously polite. Ys was silent unless asked a direct question. I’m hoping things will get more relaxed as these meetings go on. Kaoren’s looking worn again – he hates how unhappy Siame is. I think I’ll see how he feels about back rubs.

Saturday, September 27

Edge of Drama

I dreamed about that girl again. At least this time I knew to try and spot identifying marks, for all that there was precious little to see. I wanted to try doing a projection of it, which is so much simpler than trying to describe things, but when I suggested it later Kaoren and Maze said to not try that yet. It was duller than the first dream – the girl was in a narrow corridor (possibly even a secret passage), apparently eavesdropping on conversations.

These were muffled – whitestone blocks sound pretty efficiently, and unlike the girl I couldn’t press my ear to what I guess were purpose-built listening holes. Besides, I think they might have been talking in old Muinan. The tone of the voices was mostly casual, occasionally intimate. Finally the girl stopped to listen at a room where I wasn’t even sure what I was hearing. A group of people, yes, male and female, angry and worried, not quite shouting, but the words sounded like bells and thunder; resonant, strange, inhuman. Then the conversation abruptly faded, a deep voice said a couple of short words, and the girl took off at a run.

I woke up then, and snuggled into Kaoren’s side, and tried to decide why I was dreaming these things. The best I could come up with is that I’m dreaming about the last touchstone’s life, before the disaster on Muina. She looks about the right height for that small, shrouded figure. That’s nothing more than a guess, but Maze and Kaoren haven’t been able to suggest any solid alternatives. Of course, if it is the last touchstone’s life, then anything or nothing could be important. It’s given the technicians something else to argue about, and during the debate about whether I should sleep in medical I considered just not mentioning any more dreams, but I’ve accepted that enduring medical is part of what I need to do.

The test in the Ena was uneventful. I visualised the café at Pandora, and found it dark – night-time there. It was tiring enough that I didn’t mind a nap afterwards, in medical or not, and again had no dramas.

Tomorrow they’re going to have me do another projection of the place where I was dream-trapped. Kaoren’s not keen on this, and nor am I really, but it is the logical next step. They’re bringing Inisar back from Muina to get the benefit of his Sight Sight as well.

Sunday, September 28

Stress

No dream of girl last night. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. Today the visualisation of the room I’d been trapped in went smoothly, right up until they started talking about lifting the cloth covering the figure. Maze moved toward it, and I said: "Don’t!"

My heart rate spiked through the roof, and I lost the projection, and then couldn’t explain why I’d felt so panicked. Maybe it was just the idea that they might lift that cloth and the little girl I’ve been dreaming about would be lying there. Or what’s left of her. I earned myself an extra-long time in medical as a result, and then while I was there news came in that there’d been a massive attack on Kolar South.

The Kolaren Setari and military had managed to kill it, but people had died, including two of the Setari. The two who died weren’t Setari I’d met, and I feel bad that this makes it easier for me. Everyone’s looking seriously stressed out – massive attacks have never been close to so frequent before this. The kids picked up on it – or probably had been reading the news services again, which were full of doom-laden predictions.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to have nightmares tonight, no matter what visualisations I try. I’m just too upset by the idea of more and more massive attacks.

Monday, September 29

Settled

Nice to be right. I kept having projective nightmares, over and over – mostly the Velcro massive dream. I’ve become very adept at recognising them and making myself wake up, fortunately. I put into effect Kaoren’s suggestion to try to wake myself up from anything even mildly disturbing, even when I’m not sure if it’s a dream, and am feeling all the better for that working. Otherwise, right now I wouldn’t be able to risk sleeping anywhere near other people. Poor Kaoren woke with me each time, and after the fourth dream we gave up and had hot drinks – and then I heard Sen murmuring and fretting, so I went and smoothed tangled threads of hair off her forehead until she settled down. Since she was as usual in Ys' bed, I managed to wake Ys in the process, but I just gave her the same treatment, and she stood it for a full ten seconds before turning her head away.

I was less stressed out by the time we went back to bed, and had another dream about the unhappy girl. She was sitting on a whitestone roof, looking very wan and confused and vague, like she’d been doped up on drugs. I had a good view of the scenery, and divided my attention between the girl (who sat unmoving, even when it started to drizzle) and trying to memorise as much detail as possible of a busy Muinan-style city. It looked like Nuriath must once have looked, although there was a single very tall statue off to my left. It was facing away from me, and dominated the city.

After a good survey I tried to go kneel in front of the girl, but that made me aware that I didn’t have a me to kneel with, and so I woke up. All this waking up (and using my talents while sleeping) meant I spent the day feeling gluggy and tired. Despite longing to get things done, I was glad that they decided to make the day a training day instead of another session in the Ena. Not that I felt like exercising either.

Fortunately, Mara toned back her intensity, and we even had time to fit in another swimming session for the kids with Zan. Rye’s determination to do well in front of Kaoren at least sparks an equal determination in Ys to not lag behind, so they both made good progress. Sen is growing more confident with the dog paddle, and thus less inclined to cling, and the three of them looked to be enjoying just paddling back and forth to each other (in that so-funny little-kid way which makes them look like frantic frogs). Kaoren’s been off in a Captain’s meeting most of the evening, and it felt very strange to have dinner without him. I’ve yet to understand the difference between the meetings he can attend over the interface and the ones he has to go to in person.

Ys is drawing ahead of Rye in terms of reading ability, judging from their attempts with the beginning of tonight’s chapter. Taren isn’t nearly so inconsistent a language as English, and they’re both able to consistently sound out words now, just with varying levels of speed and some distinctly odd syllable breaks. I did notice that they’re beginning to shift to a more Taren rather than Nuran accent, which I guess is what you get when you cram yourself full of Taren schooling for weeks on end.

And it has been weeks. That really amazes me to think about. We’ve had the kids with us for over a month now. The idea of them belonging with us is beginning to solidify into a reality. And Kaoren and I are more certain about each other every day. I’ve been able to put aside my sense of impending doom to simply be thankful for all the good things which came with the bad.

Tuesday, September 30

Blocked

I dreamed of my girl again. She was sneaking through a series of rooms and corridors, dodging and hiding behind walls, dashing across open spaces. There were a lot of guards about, dressed in cream tunics and carrying heavy, ornate spears. No glowing eye flashes anywhere in this dream, but I did start wondering if I was watching an episode of Junior-League Stargate, which is why I’m so uncertain whether these dreams are important.

My girl was very good at sneaking about, although I think she was still drugged or whatever was wrong with her last time. Occasionally she would stop and develop a lost and confused expression, and once was nearly caught during an unfocused moment. When she wasn’t confused she seemed upset and frustrated and angry, again reminding me so much of Ys' fulminating determination.

I didn’t see the outside of the building she was working her way through, but it seemed to have an awful lot of rooms, and three or four levels. It wasn’t until she reached the central chamber that I realised we were in some kind of pyramid. The walls stepped upward in tiers to a small square ceiling which was glowing with a greeny-gold light, picking out glints which might be symbols in a big black…dome tent made of stone. That’s the best I can describe it – the shape of a big black cloth which had been pinned to the ground at the corners and then blown upward so that it formed a stone bubble, the unpinned sections curving higher to provide four entrances. It was hard to see what was underneath it – just dark and glints of the greeny-gold light, giving the space an aquatic gloom.

There were guards in the room, and the girl was watching from the uncertain shelter of one of the corridors leading into it. She grew very keyed up and nervous as she watched and waited, and shrank back at the first sign of movement under the stone tent. And then they came out. Eight foot tall, dressed in simple robes, blindingly beautiful. These weren’t fit, good-looking people like the Setari; they had an extreme physical perfection which makes me think Michelangelo, or Photoshop. Beyond flawless, honed to an eye-flinching glory which declared their importance, like they had their own personal lens flare.

The Photoshop Gods made me feel small in a way which had nothing to do with height. They just were…powerful. Power-filled. Maze might have called Inisar beyond formidable, but Inisar has never made me feel like he could effortlessly squish me like a bug – even if that’s true. I swear the air vibrated as they walked past.

All the stern guards either bowed their head sharply, or turned to follow the Photoshop Gods, and that was the girl’s chance. She dashed silently forward toward the dome, except the closer she got the slower she moved, like she was trying to walk under water. She made it, though, staggering through into the shadowy light to a place which was full of sarcophagi standing tilted upright like at Arenrhon, except without lids or little nameplates. The sarcophagi were arranged in a circle around a central pillar, and one still had a Photoshop God in it, a man laying all limp and motionless, his golden skin looking weird and waxy in the odd light, and his lens flare turned off.

And there was noise, a low whispering which instantly brought me back to my dream of being trapped.

The girl was heading toward one of the empty sarcophagi, her face all screwed up from effort. But she hadn’t gone unnoticed, and one of the guards was already racing toward her, and her spear flashed forward, and my vain attempt to stop it woke me up.

I think – I’m not sure, but I think the spear went through the girl, not in a blood and piercing way, but in a one-of-these-things-isn’t-tangible kind of way.

I was still very upset, of course, and though I tried to be all analytical and detached describing it to Kaoren, I ended up bursting into tears and crying all over him. Again it was really hard to explain why I was so upset, beyond that she reminded me of Ys and I felt sorry for her.

"Don’t discount the strength of your reaction," Kaoren said. "Whether this just happened, or is the past, or on some level a fiction, it gives us new possibilities to follow."

"Do you think that she might have been a ghost – an Ionoth like my Ghost – or is there any super-rare talent for being insubstantial?"

"You said she kicked a ball in the earlier dream."

"That wouldn’t necessarily make her not a ghost. Ghosts are supposed to be able to focus their energy to move things. And that would explain all those kids being afraid of her."

I hope some sense can be made of it all, and soon. No progress during today’s test in the Ena, where they decided to let me try and project the last room of my dream, and all I succeeded in doing was straining myself to the point that I started shaking and spent the rest of the day having muscle tremors. They still haven’t quite gone away.

I slept in medical, so of course can’t sleep now, but at least I can watch Kaoren sleep. I’m working on him getting more rest, and spent a big portion of the evening distracting him with what I’d written about my trip to Earth, and extended hand-holding. He doesn’t even remember calling me a stray, and said he was consumed by the discovery of the Pillar, and simply relieved I did exactly as he told me. I had to laugh at him for that. And I’ve found that if he starts having a nightmare while I’m awake, that if I think about something peaceful which made me happy, and kind of push it out to him, he settles down and sleeps more deeply. The power of positive thinking.

October

Wednesday, October 1

Respite

No dreams last night, which meant I spent the day trying not to fret about my dream girl. Fortunately Mara was in the mood to work me hard, which helped me not stress too much about it. My tremors are almost gone, but they decided not to do any testing today, so it was a full day of training.

Fortunately me sleeping through means Kaoren had another good night, and the shadows are gone from under his eyes. At the end of the day First and Fourth had a joint dinner in the canteen, and amused themselves interrogating the kids about what they’ve been doing at the Setari school. Rye’s so cute, drawn irresistibly out of his shell, and really wanting to not make a fool of himself among all these people who think he’s worth spending time on. Ys seems resigned to the attention, and is working to hide how much she hates the two people she cares about most letting more and more people into their lives. She reminded me so much of my dream girl that I couldn’t resist reaching out and rubbing her shoulder just for a moment. I can’t make her be happy, but I can do my best to be sure she’s comfortable and not pushed beyond her limits.

They haven’t decided what I’m doing tomorrow. Still debating risking returning me to Muina, but currently the no vote is winning.

Thursday, October 2

Big Sister

When I’m curled up in bed drifting off to sleep I spend at least a few minutes noticing the people around me – it’s like noticing the noises around you more when you’re trying to sleep. And especially when I’m asleep and not dreaming I often am at least partially aware of people moving around me, so I usually know if Sen has climbed into bed with Ys, and when Kaoren moves about. Of course, if my attention is caught up in something I can be completely oblivious to everything going on, which Kaoren wants me to make an effort to overcome. I’m getting a little better about it, I think.

Anyway, so long as I’m living in close quarters with people I’m always going to know who is sleeping with whom – certainly everyone within comfortable range distance which at the moment seems to mean all of First, Second, Third and Fourth, and a bit of Fifth and Sixth as well (I’m kind of glad I can’t reach Kajal’s room without deliberately trying). I can’t actually tell what anyone’s doing, just where they are, but if there’s two people in a bedroom all night it kind of becomes obvious. Alay often sleeps with one of the device technicians, and Ketzaren spends most of her nights with Jeh (I feel so thick for not realising they’re a couple). Maze and Zee don’t sleep with anyone so far as I can see and, for all his reputation, neither does Nils. Well, unless you count Ghost, who divides her favours between him, me and Rye. Though I guess Nils' reputation isn’t about sleeping.

I’m less aware of Third and Fourth’s relationships, but still am awkwardly conscious of knowing more about a few of them than I expect they’d be comfortable with. The thing that surprised me today, though, was Inisar and Taarel. Not sleeping together, but just I’ve noticed them together a handful of times over the last few days.

Inisar’s been kicking his heels while my projections fail, so I suppose it’s possible Taarel’s been assigned to be his native guide – or pump him for information. But they make an interesting pair – she’s so kingly and he has such presence. Though since Taarel thought she wasn’t a match with Kaoren because they both like being in charge, maybe Inisar’s someone she wouldn’t consider.

I’ve been in a very in-love-with-Kaoren mood all day, because when I woke up this morning he just had this look of contentment in his eyes. Being with me makes him happy. Spending an hour with him in the shower in the morning makes Ys give us scornful looks all through breakfast.

I didn’t dream of my ghost-girl again last night (which is probably at least part of the reason I’m burying myself in adoration of Kaoren), but on the up side Maze suggested that I try projecting my dreams of her as if it was a movie, and that worked in a patchy, disjointed way because it took a lot of what felt like mental gymnastics. Still, I was able to show them what the outside of the city looked like, and the guards, and that central room of the pyramid. The three Sight Sight observers (Kaoren, Tsur Selkie and Inisar) were extra-serious while examining the inside of the weird stone tent bubble with the one limp Photoshop God slumped in the upright sarcophagus.

They think it’s a door. Or a lock, like the metal boxes the Tarens put around gates. Or something. After that Tsur Selkie had me try to reproduce every view of the city’s outside that I could, particularly from when I was up on that roof, and they’re doing some topographic analysis of the land contours to see if they can figure out where all this happened.

I started getting muscle tremors again, not really severe ones, but that’s the last of the experiments for me for a while. A bunch of days of training and medical tests instead, while they try to analyse the jumble of images I’d produced.

Friday, October 3

Close Calls

Siame visited for dinner again. She seems to be swapping through approaches with these visits, first ignoring me, then interrogating me, and now making very polite conversation but looking completely bored. The most she achieved with that was annoying both Kaoren and Ys (who probably thinks she has dibs on being rude to me), and prompting Sen to offer her one of her dolls and then Ghost for cuddling. But Ghost doesn’t currently approve of Siame and went off to haunt Nils instead.

Rye was either oblivious to undercurrents, or determined to pretend not to notice and distract us with the latest news from Muina. A handful of the breakaway group of Nurans had returned to Pandora carrying one boy with a broken leg. Who’d had a broken leg for a couple of days. The leaders of the breakaway group had refused to allow anyone to call to Pandora for help, and since they had no skilled medics with them, the poor guy spent a short eternity in agony until finally his closest friends rescued him and tried to carry him all the way back to Pandora. I’m not exactly sure what the settlement’s Nuran Setari observer was doing during all this, but I expect he’s the reason a group of greensuits in a flier happened across them almost straight away and gave them a lift. Details are sparse, but KOTIS did make a short statement that those who had returned had chosen to stay.

Inisar went back this morning, before the news broke, and more news arrived after the kids had gone to bed that about two-thirds of the group had upped and followed the injured boy’s group and started marching back to Pandora. Some more fliers were sent out to pick them up. There’s a little under thirty Nurans left at Nurenor, which is what they apparently have named their little settlement. The news stories showed some aerial shots of Nurenor, which looked muddy and muddled and dispiriting. I was most interested in the number of hairy sheep that they’d managed to pen up. There’s more hairy sheep in that region of Muina than any other animal, I swear. Apparently being butted by one of the rams was how the injured boy’s leg was broken.

A reminder to me of how lucky I am.

Saturday, October 4

Two Feet

Still no dream of my ghost-girl. Odds are I was dreaming the last days of her life up until she died.

Kaoren could see I was down, but worked with my mood rather than trying to change it. I wish I could be as perceptive about him in return. I didn’t even realise he’d been injured in training until I saw this huge black bruise on his back. The padding covering one of those swinging booms in the Sight training course had come loose when he jumped on it, and that had delayed his jump long enough for another boom to hit him in the back. He said minor injuries were to be expected, and shrugged it off.

Since his Sights make it almost impossible for me to hide that not knowing dismayed me, I just accepted that he would know that I was feeling bad about not even realising, and distracted myself giving him foot rubs while reading him another installation of my diary. I made it all the way up to Unara Rotation, and then he fell asleep and I could let myself freak out.

That boom could just as easily have hit him in the head.

Sunday, October 5

Bruised

Kaoren’s shoulder was so stiff and sore this morning, he took himself off to medical. Nothing’s broken, just unhappy muscles, and the medicking has helping it along tremendously. By the time he was feeling better, I was stiff and sore and bruised instead, as Mara continues to push my training (including, sadly, dodging and learning how to fall down in clever ways). I am quite fit now, but not a fan of throwing myself on the ground.

Sen had a marvellous time investigating our injuries and playing doctor by applying the green goop the medics give for bruises. We finished our current book at bedtime, and I told Ys it was her turn to pick the next story, and she told me straight away. I think she’s been looking forward to it, and for a minute I had to blink at how pleased I was and how much I want her to accept me. In return I asked her if she’d take Sen through her sleep visualisation exercise, and I think that pleased Ys a lot. One thing I can’t let myself forget is that Ys and Rye raised Sen, and it upsets them immensely to be in any way sidelined from her life. Ys had obviously paid a great deal of attention to the exercises, and was very calm and measured taking Sen through her favourite.

I was careful not to push it by complimenting Ys overmuch, and I think the simple nod passed her suspicion barriers well enough.

I’m turning into Kaoren.

Monday, October 6

Price of Together

I dreamed of my ghost-girl! She was dazed and non-responsive, but at least didn’t seem injured. She was again sitting on the roof of a building, and with Tsur Selkie in mind I made sure to get good long looks in every direction. Then, conscious that last time I’d tried to do anything in this kind of dream it had immediately woken me up, I very cautiously tried to project my voice so she could hear, but I’m not sure if I managed it or not, only that I woke up feeling rather tired and dizzy.

Since I was still feeling rather tired and dizzy after breakfast was done, Kaoren took me off to medical, where I promptly fell back to sleep and dreamed of my ghost-girl again (still sitting on the roof). Kaoren had warned it was probably best not to try attempting communication again, and though I was tempted, the energy level it seems liable to take might be beyond me unless I was asleep in the Ena or something.

I’m scheduled for another experiment tomorrow, and I’m going to ask if I can try manifesting just the girl, rather than the place she’s in. It’s not something I’ve tried before – too afraid of making permanent Ionoth which roam free attacking Setari – but I think it’s worth a shot.

I guess she really is a ghost though, since she’s still there after being speared. I asked Kaoren today whether what Earth people calls ghosts would count as Ionoth. It seems different to me. He’s not entirely certain. Tarens do have stories about ghosts, but they’re considered a version of Ionoth – memories of people.

Preliminary scripts for the first few episodes of the next season of The Hidden War have shown up. It’s very interesting seeing what they’re doing to reform Lastier to make the idea of him having a romance with me more believable. During the end of the last season they kept him pretty full of himself, and delightfully sarcastic, especially during the Arenrhon exploration, but emphasised the professionalism, and made sure that I acted entertained by his cleverer remarks. And showed how completely his squad trusted him. They haven’t put in any hint of obvious romance though, but just an underlying sense that there could potentially be something there.

The first episode will be an extra-long episode, starting with my log up to passing out in that bathroom, switching to the search for me, and then the rest of my log and then the discovery of my arrow and my rescue. Lastier stays supremely professional throughout, until news finally arrives of the arrow, and then they keep showing his reaction to things – the news that they’re in range of me, that I’m critically injured, and then they get to me. And just for a moment his face shows how shaken he is, and he closes his eyes and struggles to put back a mask of cool evaluation. By the time people start watching my log and are being horrified about the Cruzatch he’s enough the usual Lastier to snark about my fighting ability.

Amazingly (but perhaps fortunately) the kids hadn’t discovered The Hidden War before Kaoren and I started discussing it over breakfast (although Sen’s been watching that Setari Song Star show). Ys and Rye immediately looked for and found the first episode about me (neatly demonstrating how far they’ve advanced in their ability to use the interface, not to mention read/use the text-to-voice function). The Hidden War is classified the equivalent of PG for under-thirties, so we had to give permission for Sen to see it, and we watched it together instead of our usual after-dinner game. Ys wanted to know exactly what was true and what wasn’t, and Rye was primarily caught up by the fact that Se-Ahn Surat looks nothing like me – and the discovery that both my eyes used to be the same colour. His reaction to Lastier was pretty much on par with Fourth Squad’s.

It was a good opportunity to talk them through the problems caused by our notoriety, the impact that would have on them, and the fact that there was sure to be scripts in the future involving them. That was something we couldn’t prevent entirely, but Kaoren told them that it was their decision as to whether anything true about them was known, or if it was all left to scriptwriters to fabricate. I’d already made clear in my initial feedback that I wanted the kids kept out of the show as much as possible. Ys and Rye had already read quite a few news articles discussing the fact that Kaoren and I had expanded our family, but were of course less than impressed with the idea that there would be actors pretending to be them, and that a lot of people would believe that how they behaved on the show was what they were really like.

"Think over what you would prefer," Kaoren said. "The truth, an invented history, or leave them with nothing so that what they show is nothing of you."

Ys immediately vetoed making things up, looking at the script outlines given to us, it wouldn’t be until the next season that it becomes an issue, but as our shopping trip has already shown them, a great many people are going to be interested in them.

Knowing more now about Nuran culture, I’m glad we didn’t just let them disappear into the eight thousand. Until all the Nuran children are adopted, this system of servants and Houses and Zarath would have put Ys and Rye in a bad place, no matter what opinion Tarens and Kolarens have of it, and it was important to get my three out of that to cut short any threat of them being separated. Sometimes I think I’m doing them more harm than good, and sometimes I’m just enjoying the hugs too much to care.

I keep trying to think of ways I can help my ghost-girl as well, but I have to face the near-certainty that it’s way too late for me to do anything for her.

Tuesday, October 7

Reversed Polarity

I thought at first that last night’s dream was exactly the same, but after surveying the city I realised that my ghost-girl just hadn’t moved, was still sitting dazed and confused on the same roof a day later.

For today’s session Tsur Selkie agreed to let me try and project just my ghost-girl and not her surroundings, if I thought I could do that. I wasn’t entirely sure, and I feel increasingly embarrassed at the prospect of failing these experiments when I now have four squads sitting in attendance. Second and Eighth were the spares this time, since Third has been sent to Muina.

It was a struggle. It felt like trying to push the wrong ends of two magnets together – I could feel more or less how I needed to go, but then my mind would slip off focus. I was just about to concede defeat when that slippery sense of repulsion reversed, and I felt like I was being pulled into something, and clutched at my test chair in a panic, convinced I was going to end up back in that horrible room again. My vitals skyrocketed, and the near-space all around me started distorting, making everyone feel heavier. Tsur Selkie sent most of the squads backward, and sharply ordered me to stop the test.

I said, "It isn’t me," sounding thoroughly freaked out, and shuddered as the drag got even worse and just for a moment I thought I saw my ghost-girl, but then there was an awful piercing pain in my head, and I passed out. That last was the interface deciding to start growing again. They still have no idea why the interface reacts this way with me occasionally, and they’re talking about uninstalling it completely until further notice. But we’re learning all my foibles and so were at least ready for the possibility, quickly shutting it down. My eye was damaged, but not very badly, and I’ll be piratical for only a short while.

I woke in medical to the news that at the exact time as my attempted projection, all the platforms and malachite marbles on Muina had reacted. It had lasted for only for the few seconds before I’d collapsed, but the satellites and drones busy scanning Muina’s surface had picked up a power reading in a region where no malachite marble had as yet been discovered. A new place to search.

Kaoren has this tiny frown-line between his eyes that was never there before.

I wasn’t the one projecting. I stopped as soon as I felt that heaviness, and something else went on. We have the rough location of another malachite marble in return, but if I hadn’t passed out I’m not sure what would have happened.

Thursday, October 9

Hooked

I didn’t dream of my ghost-girl last night. She dreamed of me.

Or I dreamed of her dreaming of me. At any rate, I could tell it wasn’t like my normal dreams. I dreamed that I was asleep on the scan bed, and Kaoren was asleep in the low lounge chair they’d fetched in for him. The lights were at half setting, but I could see straight away when my ghost-girl showed up – just there, looking at me.

Kaoren woke up immediately – he tells me it was because of my energy output, not because the girl registered as a threat – and after a long look at the girl (who was staring fixedly at me) he said: "Her name is Cassandra."

The girl only gave him the barest glance. "What happened to her face?"

She was speaking old Muinan, and there was a pause (while Kaoren accessed a translator for the words he didn’t understand), then he slowly said in the best old Muinan he could manage: "She was injured by a communication device. She has been dreaming about you. Do you have the same ability to see and create projections?"

The girl gave him a suspicious look. "Who are you?"

"My name is Kaoren. Cassandra and I are…hand fasted. Will you tell me your name?"

That earned him a long second look, then: "Liranadestar. Where is this place?"

Kaoren’s eyes were very narrow, and I could tell people were giving him a lot of conflicting instructions on what to say to her. "This is a world called Tare, a planet that some of the inhabitants of Muina fled to after the spaces were shattered."

From the little frown, I guessed the girl didn’t quite understand at least part of what he said, but wasn’t willing to admit it. So like Ys, who hates to show any form of ignorance.

"Can you take a message for me?" the girl (who can be called Lira because Liranadestar is a worse mouthful than Sen’s name) asked. "To Peresadestar of Nuriath? Tell him that Naranezolen of Oriath took me away to a city I don’t know. I haven’t been able to reach out to him the way I usually do. I can’t understand why."

"Do you remember going to a room with a dome made of black stone?" Kaoren asked very carefully.

"No," Lira said, but then paused and looked confused. "Will you carry my message?" she asked, with a ferocious frown.

Kaoren looked from her to me. I was starting to feel pretty bad, achingly exhausted, like I hadn’t been to sleep for years. His mouth was a flat line as he looked back at her, and he said, "The people you’re speaking of have been dead for centuries. Muina was abandoned centuries ago. Nuriath lies in ruins."

She gave him a disbelieving glare, but was shaken by the calm certainty in Kaoren’s eyes and then wavered and vanished. I woke myself up, and held out a hand for him, and shuddered from the effort of just that.

"She was using me as anchor to look here," I said, as he helped me sit up a little. "But she’s projecting herself. Can she be dead, and yet project herself?"

I didn’t get an answer to this – still haven’t – and a technician bustled in with a fortifier and made me drink it until I passed out for the better part of a day. At least I was already in medical. Kaoren stayed with me most of the time, with Maze, Zan, Zee and Mara occasionally spelling him. I felt pretty damn gluggy when I finally woke up, and took a long, cold shower to try and pep myself up a little. It hasn’t really worked, but they don’t want me to go back to sleep as yet, and are making me periodically walk around to keep my circulation up.

Everyone’s a little freaked out about how much energy the projection was costing me. If I was right about it being her dream, not mine, then I mightn’t even be able to wake myself up from it. Since I didn’t try, there’s a lot of unease about what will happen if she uses me as an anchor again. She’s considerably more powerful than me – or, rather, they think she’s actively linked to the platforms and malachite marbles on Muina, because they reacted again during this dream – which is another thing freaking everyone out. No-one’s allowed to use platforms except for emergencies.

There’s been a lot of Cruzatch sightings in Pandora near-space – and Taren and Kolaren near-space – and everyone’s on high alert. KOTIS Command is debating taking me back to Muina to see if that reduces the energy cost of the dreams, but they’re worried about exposing me to Cruzatch attack, not to mention the possibility of me getting trapped in that dark place again. But waiting till I’m stronger is no longer the safest option.

I’m giving people ulcers on their ulcers.

On the positive news front, they’ve found another of the Arenrhon-type places in the zone where the satellite picked up power readings. And they’ve located Oriath on the old maps recovered from Kalasa and are going to send an expedition there to scout around.

I am very bored with being in medical now, and am going to try my hand at bullying Kaoren into letting me go back to our apartment, at least while I’m awake.

Friday, October 10

To Atanra

On the way back to Muina to see if the energy cost of my dreams is less there. More ping-ponging between planets. I don’t see what else KOTIS could do, but I am starting to feel like one of a mob of squawking chickens, running back and forth, back and forth, trying to find a safe place because the sky is falling everywhere.

My interface is still turned off, and it’s very strange travelling without it. Makes me feel very isolated, for all I have four full squads with me.

We did have quite a debate about the kids, since we’re not going to Pandora, but to a newly built facility called Atanra (the word means passage) which is very near Muina’s rift into deep-space and is intended as a staging ground for planetary arrivals and departures. They hurried construction along at least in part so they could keep me close to the rift in case I get trapped again. No platform, no handy Ddura you can summon to play guard dog. Lots of shielding and defences, presumably. Because it’s not considered a safe zone, the kids will be going on to Pandora. And because the squads no longer have any members on sick leave, they’ve been assigned a babysitter.

I’m trying not to show how hugely entertained I am by the idea of Siame’s first mission being looking after three children who think they’re well able to look after themselves. Not that, with all her Sights, Siame is probably in any doubt as to me finding the situation funny. She’s being very self-assured – she really has a phenomenal poise, which only the drastic alteration to her close relationship with Kaoren has come close to upsetting. She decided to be coolly professional with me again, polite with a hint of Kaoren’s dryness, not pretending to like me, but careful not to be hostile either. I can live with that.

It’s been fun watching the squads react to her, particularly Fourth and Eighth, who have probably seen her before when they were Kalrani, but not had that much to do with her and thus see her entirely as "Tsee Ruuel’s sister" and are rather wary. Most of the senior Setari are encouraging, but Lohn and Nils seem to regard her as Kaoren’s mini-me and are longing to tease her. They’ve taken her, Ys and Rye on a tour of the ship (it’s the Litara this time – considerably larger than the Diodel).

I’m hoping they turn my interface back on soon, so that I’ll be able to chat to the kids even though they’re in a different settlement. Sen is particularly fond of sending a channel request to me at random moments, and it bothers her that it currently won’t connect. She’s not very happy at all right now. I’ve been taking the opportunity of the flight to be reassuringly well and alive, but the eye patch makes it a little unconvincing, and she’s been latched on to me as much as possible. She’s half-asleep in my lap helping me write.

Theoretically we left Ghost behind, but I can feel her wandering about the ship. Since there’s no Ddura at Atanra, I figure it should be okay. Nearly at the rift entrance, so it’s time to go back to our pods.

subtitle:[* * *]

Atanra is basically barracks, warehouses and a big landing spot for ships. One single building for all the living areas to make it easier to protect, furnished with very solid shielding. I spent my time being scanned while the Setari swept the area and checked the drone set in near-space for signs of Cruzatch activity. Ghost kept me invisible company, but is otherwise maintaining a low profile.

Thankfully the medics decided it was okay to turn my interface back on, and so I was able to read the kids their bedtime story and ask them what Pandora was looking like now (most of the flowers have moved on, lightning-quick, and all the trees are leaf-dusted). I’m feeling a little over-observed, since my room is a medical observation area. It’s not too bad, I guess – it has two beds so that Kaoren can sleep in the same room as me – but I’m feeling like I should dig out one of my lab rat shirts.

Saturday, October 11

Ghosts

No dreams or projections of any sort last night. With four squads assigned to look after me, I’m going to spend my time feeling perpetually guilty about wasting their time. They’ve broken into a dayshift and a nightshift, and are busy clearing the area of nearby Ionoth and obligingly pretending they’re not sitting around waiting for me to do something interesting. I’m not even scheduled for testing at the moment, until my eye is back to normal.

Atanra might be an interesting place to visit if I was allowed to go outside, but between health and safety issues I have a choice between the mess hall and my medical observation unit. I spent the day doing a lot of schoolwork, sleeping, and trying not to cringe during an examination of my eye. I was unconscious for a lot longer the last time my interface went haywire, so I missed the sensation of my eye not feeling right.

I was in a bit of a mood most of the day. I always feel embarrassed when I’m feeling grumpy, given all the people who’re stuck babying me, but I dealt with it by telling people I was feeling grumpy and was going to concentrate on schoolwork.

The highlight of my day was an actual conversation with Ys – who sent me a channel request after discovering an interface site devoted to "Caszandra’s children", which had a lot of detail apparently culled from conversations with some of the Nuran survivors. About Ys and Rye they only seem to know that they were servants who had been assigned to look after Sen, but they had quite a bit of information about Sen’s parents – Fiionarestel and Durenatar. The story (as retold) sounded a bit Romeo and Juliet – Fiionarestel was a highly respected scholar (and Sight Sight talent) and Durenatar some kind of architect. They’d been close childhood friends, but their families (or Heads of their Houses, rather) had a disagreement and they were forbidden from seeing each other. And had anyway, and had Sen, and were totally cut off from their families until they were found dead following what was widely believed to have been a murder-suicide.

Ys desperately doesn’t want Sen to know any of this. She hated asking me, but her need to protect Sen trumps everything, and so she wanted me to find a way to suppress all information about Sen’s parents.

Having finally reached this point, I asked very cautiously: "Does Sen not know anything about her parents?"

"She knows they were killed. She does not talk about them."

Ys sounded angry, which is her way of being very upset.

"You don’t need me point out that Sen’s Sight probably means she knows far more about this than you do," I said. "And you know perfectly well you can’t control what other people say. If there anything to do, it’s to see if there is truth to their deaths, rather than gossip. I can ask Inisar if he knows any details. Would you like me do that?"

She’s decided she wants to think about it first, and went back to not wanting to talk to me. I’m tempted to ask Inisar anyway, especially given the conspiracies complicating Nuri over the past few years. But I think right now Sen’s more likely to be upset by Ys' anxiety than what happened to her parents.

Sunday, October 12

Mind’s Eye

I didn’t dream of my ghost-girl last night. I dreamed about Nils. Well, to be exact I had a series of dreams about Helese Surion and Nils. The first dream was Nils and Helese on her fiftieth birthday (which is sixteen and two-thirds, when you shift to young adult status according to Taren law and can take the exam to be granted adult rights). They’d gone out to dinner together, and then they made love (for the first time, I think). She and Nils looked fantastic together – Helese was tall and handsome rather than what I guess would be called beautiful on Earth, and she teased Nils about being prettier than she was, which at that age he was. He called her Lese and so plainly lived and breathed for her that I could barely stand knowing that things wouldn’t work out for them.

The dream shifted, and an older Helese was holding a party to celebrate her engagement to Maze. Nils was there, and was very gracious and happy for them, and flirted more than successfully with Mara, who took him back to her quarters. But after she’d fallen asleep he lay in her bed looking devastated.

And then another shift, to Nils sitting alone in what I guess was his apartment, conjuring an illusion of Helese and talking to it about Zee, about how she’d become so important to him even though he’d promised himself he’d never let himself really care about anyone again, and how fun it had been giving her the lowest possible opinion of him to keep her safely at a distance. But that he was feeling so tired of it all lately.

I was crying when I woke up, and was then in an extremely awkward position because my energy output had made it obvious I was having some kind of talent dream, and there I was with tears running down my face and not wanting to admit why.

Kaoren was sitting watching me, so I opened a channel. "Can I just say that my dream wasn’t anything to do with Muina or Cruzatch or anything that needs to be talked about?"

"What was it about?"

"Senior Setari private lives."

My day would have been far less uncomfortable if he’d been willing to leave it at that, but Kaoren gave me a searching look and then asked, "If you were dreaming something like that, why didn’t you wake yourself up?"

And the problem was that I hadn’t been able to. Admittedly I hadn’t tried immediately, fascinated when I realised that Nils had been dating Helese Surion, but I’d tried to wake up when she and Nils started making love, and hadn’t been able to. It was just like when I was trapped in my ghost-girl’s dream. And as soon as I told Kaoren that it hadn’t been my dream exactly, he immediately wanted to know whose it was.

It didn’t seem possible to avoid answering that, and after a quick interface conversation Kaoren confirmed that Nils had been sleeping – and dreaming – at the same time as me. But I was very firmly of the opinion that there was no way in hell I was going tell anyone what Nils had been dreaming, and escaped into the shower to buy myself some thinking time. Kaoren told me later that he could mainly sense overwhelming guilt from me, which wasn’t easy for him, but he decided that the simplest thing to do would be for me to talk to Nils and confirm that we’d been dreaming the same thing, and that there was no need to record the actual content of the dream.

Talking to Nils was the absolute last thing I wanted to do – closely followed by talking to anyone in First Squad (who were fortunately still asleep) – but I knew that saying that would only compound an already mortifying situation, so I forced myself to go off to a neutrally boring little meeting room where Nils was waiting. He was looking down at his hands when I arrived, his expression remote and stern, and I instantly pictured him naked and miserable and wished I was anywhere else.

Nils glanced up and saw me cringing in the doorway, and the stern look went away as he smiled. "If you go about acting like I might eat you, I might be tempted to try."

"I’m sorry," I blurted out in response. "I didn’t mean to do that to you."

For a second something harder came into his eyes, but he sighed and said: "I know. Sit down. Your very annoying boyfriend has given me a list of questions to answer."

I sat, and said, "I can guess. No I wasn’t thinking about you or, uh, any other Setari before I went sleep. I was thinking about Sen’s parents. It very much like the dreams I had when Lira dreaming of talking to Kaoren, though not nearly as tiring. Like I was there, but not. The dream went from birthday to engagement party to your apartment."

He lifted his eyebrows, amused, but I know now that Nils is not nearly so carefree as he makes out, and I cringed all the more inside. I’ve never done anything before which made me feel so completely in the wrong.

"Lohn and I are going to have to increase the scale of red we can try to make you turn," he said lightly. "Did you know that today is 'Lese’s birthday? She would have been eighty."

I shook my head. "No-one talks about her."

"No. Helese, Cham, Senere, Mede, Suzlein. And two of the younger squads, all gone in a single blow. Alay was deeply involved with Suzlein. She plays around with some sour squitch of a technician now, I think to punish herself for being alive. Regan and Mede had been on and off for years, but they were on at that time and he – I barely recognise him. All of these people we’d known since our twenties, almost a third of all the people who we relied on to understand us, lost. We barely functioned in the aftermath. Kisikar retired. Do you know what the most frightening thing about you is?"

That I couldn’t answer, but he wasn’t expecting me to. "Not that you can cause someone to relive their past – for that was far more than a dream for me – but that you could far surpass me in conjuring up people to chat to. I’ve talked to 'Lese on every one of her birthdays since she was fifteen – I knew her before the Setari program began – and didn’t let a little matter like her death end that. But it’s just an image of her, and I’m not sure I’d make the image talk back even if I could achieve that. But you – you could create something which was 'Lese."

"At least until I passed out," I said.

"Mn, and I doubt 'Lese would appreciate being made an Ionoth, no matter how briefly. This isn’t likely to be the last time you do something which hurts someone. That’s why you’re working to learn how to control it. The sheer scope of what you might do is undercut by your tendency to nearly die in the process, but if we ever get past current dramas you’re going to have to expect people to realise you are frightening as well as amusing. And prepare for those who would use you, or remove you, because you are unutterably dangerous. I suppose it’s fortunate you think someone like Ruuel a wonderful thing." He paused, considering me, then added with a sheerly wicked grin: "And I am going to enjoy telling people that you were having an erotic dream about me."

My horrified reaction to this made him laugh, and he stood up, opening the door. "The correct response to that should be And not for the first time!, but I’ll forgive you the lapse. We’ve covered enough for me to write this report, anyway."

He left, but I sat there for a while, thinking about how different from the usual Nils he’d been, how he’d given me a lecture, and a warning, and calmed me down at the same time. And that he hadn’t tried to pretend that I hadn’t hurt him. Kaoren came to check on me, and since the meeting room is more private than my medical room, I climbed into his lap and kissed him a lot, then told him how awful I felt about invading Nils' privacy like that, and wanted to know if he had any suggestions for how to not ever do that again. I wish he’d said yes, that there was something instant and immediate and certain. He did say it shouldn’t be overlooked that Nils is an extremely strong Illusion talent, which is a thing not completely dissimilar from my projection abilities, and suggested that I should think over any distinctive aspects of the dream so that I can try to escape it as it forms. I spent the rest of the day trying to find a big enough rock to crawl under.

But there’s no place to hide in a facility designed to observe you, and I had little chance of escaping Maze, though he did give me until lunchtime, after First came back from a morning patrol. He took me up to eat lunch on the roof, which would otherwise be a treat given that I’m not allowed out of the compound.

He gave no sign of being upset, and when we were both sitting asked: "Did you know Nils was once a captain candidate?" He didn’t wait for an answer, going on: "One of the best, but he withdrew his candidacy shortly before he and Helese stopped seeing each other. It bothered 'Lese a great deal, because she knew she was the reason, though she couldn’t argue against his logic, since he said he wouldn’t put a squad in danger because his focus wasn’t on them. Nils doesn’t argue, or discuss the things which matter to him: he decides his preferred course and carries it out. When he saw how powerfully drawn 'Lese was to me, he switched himself out of a position of responsibility and quietly ended their relationship. Almost everyone believes it was the mutual waning of interest he claimed, for he loathes exposing his true feelings, and hides them very well."

"Hope you’re not trying to make me feel better," I said, feeling about an inch tall.

"I’m trying to identify what caused this," he said, grave and calm. "Today, there’s only one thing Nils would have been focused on. The dream was about 'Lese, wasn’t it?"

I nodded, mouse-like.

"That makes your dream far less likely to be only triggered by you, you see. The sheer strength of Nils' emotion may be the reason you dreamed as you did. In a way he may have shaped your power, just as it is believed the Ena is shaped by the minds, thoughts and feelings of the living."

"Do you believe that?" I asked. I’ve been far, far too interested in Zee’s and Nils' relationship to regard a handily-delivered explanation as anything but the result of my own curiosity.

"I believe a dream about 'Lese on 'Lese’s birthday is unlikely to be coincidence. This really matters to you, doesn’t it?"

"It–" I was burningly embarrassed all over again. "Even if didn’t mean it, it was violation. If someone did that to me, I don’t know if could stand look at them ever again."

"Then learn how to prevent it," Maze said, straightforwardly. "Knowing that the dreamer is reliving their past will no doubt give you extra determination, even if the dream is not one you control." He gave me one of his glorious smiles. "We’re not going to hate you for this, Caszandra. Certainly not Nils, who is far too just. And we have a certain amount of experience accepting that Place and Sight Sight talents will know far more about our inner lives than we’d care to reveal. Like you, they are generally generous enough not to treat that knowledge as gossip."

But nor does anyone really like the fact, even without having it underlined by being forced to relive the best and worst days of your life. The idea that it was Nils driving the dream, not me, isn’t any more comforting, since that means that my dreams, my projections, can be controlled from outside by people other than touchstones.

I’ve been stressed out all day, and don’t want to sleep and I’m painfully aware that everyone, from Kaoren to the technicians, has been wracking their brains trying to find a way to calm me down. I didn’t even want to write in my diary, but Kaoren asked me to because he thinks it will help.

I used to like sleeping.

Monday, October 13

Stasis

Kaoren did the otters visualisation with me before I went to sleep, and this was familiar and comfortable enough that I was able to recognise when I started projecting it, and to keep it as my own dream rather than manifest it. This small advance in control has made me feel vaguely hopeful overall, and at least I felt well-rested when I woke up, and not nearly so tense and sick.

But I still don’t want to go anywhere near Nils or First Squad and so was less than keen to be sent for basic stepping exercises with Mara. Mara was a particular hurdle, since I had after all watched her have sex with Nils and didn’t know how much that night had mattered to her, or the timing of her relationship with Lohn, or anything. But she didn’t ask questions, only gave me a quizzical, evaluating look, then took me through the stepping exercises, and didn’t act at all curious about what I may or may not have been dreaming. After that, Lohn showed up and wanted to know how the kids were going and how they were taking to Siame – which seems to be a hostile truce at the moment – and we ended up making a channel with them and playing games for much of the afternoon.

Siame approached the games in the same manner as Kaoren – incisive and methodically competent, not holding back, but not apparently concerned about victory. The atmosphere changed when Fourth came back from their patrol, and Kaoren joined in. Against him Siame was competitive.

Lohn was very amused by this, and afterwards when all four squads were together for dinner/breakfast, he told Kaoren that he felt he should be insulted by how Siame obviously rated him and Mara. Everyone was being chatty, doing their best to put me at my ease, and when Nils leaned down at dinner to murmur in my ear: "This is just to make you blush," of course I did, and managed to give him the proper annoyed grimace afterwards. But I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to not feel guilty every time I see him.

Tuesday, October 14

Forward

Big progress, not from me, but from the exploration team led by Third who have been exploring Oriath, the middle-sized city in the southern hemisphere mentioned by Lira. They’ve located an extra-large underground facility, with requisite malachite marble, a fair distance outside the city. Eeli is very proud of herself, and rightly so, since they’re hoping this may be the headquarters of the House Zolen conspirators. Planning is already underway to create a research site there, and to my relief there’s also discussion about moving me back to Pandora, since I’ve spent a few days on Muina now without having a major medical crisis. Particularly because they want to divert some of my excessive escort to the Oriath site. They’ve sent Eighth off to join Third already.

My attempt to dream of Lira last night didn’t go anywhere, which at least means I had another good night’s rest. The technicians are saying that I may be able to have my eye unbandaged tomorrow, and if I’m given an all-clear on health, they’re considering a visualisation. The patrols haven’t spotted any Cruzatch in this area, so KOTIS Command figures that they can have me test in the Ena here, and then if all goes well whisk me off to somewhere else.

Ghost has reappeared. I hadn’t seen her since we flew here, and was privately rather worried. But she woke Nils up today sleeping on his chest. He seemed happy to see her, but I earned a minor lecture from Maze for failing to mention that she’d ridden along with us. Then she was fussed over a lot, and is happily seducing random technicians.

Partway through the day I had a nice long discussion with Isten Notra, who had read all my clumsy reports on my dreams, and spent a full kasse winkling every possible detail out of me, pushing me for all the impressions and opinions that I shy away from expressing.

We received further scripts for The Hidden War today as well, with the first few episodes rewritten in more detail – they’ll be going into production on those soon I guess – and the next few episodes in first draft. I was highly amused to see that they had written in the whole stealing of my personal file, and me being made part of a Setari entertainment program. I can’t say I enjoyed the script all about me being emotionally frayed, but the stuff about Lastier’s squad being scandalised by their portrayal was very funny. Then there’s the Velcro/Astroturf massive, which is another script I didn’t enjoy, but was generally accurate.

Wednesday, October 15

Sudden Defence

I woke up in the middle of the night because Kaoren had been gone a while, and found him, Maze and Grif Regan down in the dining room, taking part in an interface meeting. There had been an attack on the Oriath expedition. Eeli’s unconscious with a head injury, and Kade from Eighth is badly torn up. It was a huge surge of Cruzatch, and they only overcame it because the ships had weapons, and the Setari were able to retreat to them and blast everything in sight.

The attack suggests that Oriath is important to the Cruzatch, which I guess counts as useful information. KOTIS has withdrawn entirely from the site for now, intending to return in force.

This makes the question of what to do with me a tricky one, and Kaoren’s just told me that they’ve decided on an Ena visualisation trip ASAP, and then to observe me sleeping afterwards, and they’ll decide whether to send me back to Tare or on to Pandora depending on whether I have another episode.

Tactical Survey

They had me visualise the site at Oriath, after showing me the mission log. Third and Eighth had been exploring a sprawling palace which was above the sealed installation, searching for entrances and any information. After I’d watched the log to just before the point where they were attacked, Kaoren stepped me through a description of the room they’d been in, but continually emphasising that there were no Cruzatch there, and I was able to project the room and the surrounding ones without effort. Fortunately without the Cruzatch, as ordered, although the theory was that I could just drop the projection if I produced them as well.

My minders (all three squads) fanned out and explored the nearby areas which Third and Eighth hadn’t reached as yet, and then we headed back to real-space, leaving a drone behind to monitor for Cruzatch. If they showed up, it would suggest Cruzatch are able to detect my projections.

Back in real-space, they had me project the same area again, but this time with Cruzatch, emphasising what the area looked like right at that moment. So long as no-one moves the projected physical objects, or makes too much noise, projected Ionoth don’t notice people in real-space and – depending on how strongly I’m projecting – are often only visible to me. In this case the Setari could sort of see the Cruzatch, and they could definitely see the crystallised webbing the Cruzatch were laying down, just as they had around the Kalasa platform. This is very good information to know, and I can now regard myself as a military spy satellite.

They debated having me try to project what the place had looked like back before the disaster, but this was deemed too risky, so I was sent to medical to be tired, and since I slept without even dreaming, let alone getting trapped anywhere, we’re on the way to Pandora. Haven’t told the kids yet, because I can’t resist surprising them, whether they appreciate it or not.

Reunion

My morning visualisation and midday nap has messed me up rather thoroughly in terms of adapting to Pandora’s earlier timeframe. I’d only been awake (again) for a couple of hours when we arrived at Pandora around its sunset. Everyone had been in a grim mood the entire day, and an undernote of anger was added in when we reached the Setari building and met up with Third and Eighth – those who weren’t in medical, anyway. Only a few of them don’t have some sort of injury – Cruzatch are quick close-combat fighters, and nanosuits only partially protect the Setari from their burning claws. They’d also proven adept at throwing chunks of rubble during combat, which is what had happened to Eeli. She’s over at the main medical building.

Taarel’s hair’s really short. She was clawed across the back, and her long spirals of hair were severed and melted so she cut it all off. She looks amazingly different, but still very regal and commanding and very intent on the plans for the counter-strike, even though Third won’t be going. I think she needs to concentrate on that to stop herself worrying about Eeli.

More squads are coming from Tare and Kolar, along with smaller combat-oriented ships. The exact timing for the attack hasn’t been settled, and won’t be until after another visualisation.

I only stayed down in the common room for a short while, then Kaoren and I went up to be with the kids (who were having their bath when we first arrived). Rye was first out, and stopped dead at the sight of the two of us talking quietly to Siame, and then went all formal, which was impossibly sweet and reminded me of those really old movies where the kids call their fathers Sir. Kaoren put his hand on Rye’s head by way of greeting and the poor kid just about died of joy. It was interesting watching Siame’s shut-down expression – I think of the three she feels the most sympathy for Rye, but it really hurts her to see Kaoren being affectionate with other people.

Rye must have told Ys and Sen over the interface that we were here, because there was suddenly a shriek from the other bathroom, a rather magnificent splash, and then Sen pelted into the lounge, all wet hair and bubbles, to throw herself into my lap. Ys appeared a few moments later, clutching a mass of towels and brick-red with embarrassment. I dissolved into laughter and was half-choked by Sen’s death grip as Ys dropped some of the towels over her. Kaoren kindly discovered a need to go into our bedroom for a minute, which allowed for some towel-readjustment.

It’s impossible not to adore Sen, and I hugged her back, and told her how much I’d missed all three of them, and that it had felt much longer than a few days. Then I told her that she’d better get a little less soapy or she’d slide right out of bed while I was reading today’s story. I squeezed Ys' shoulder gently and then gave Siame a kick on the ankle because she was staring at the part of Ys' back which was exposed, which fortunately Ys hadn’t noticed, though Rye had. He’d gone white, but didn’t say anything as Ys left the room and I went over and hugged him really hard, then asked him to tell me what they’d been doing at the talent school. Siame’s far from stupid, so she took my heavy-footed hint, and showed no sign of curiosity (but no doubt had a discussion with Kaoren about it).

They’ve built another little bedsicle nook in the apartment for Siame (with her Sights, I suspect she’d very much preferred not to borrow our bed while we weren’t here), and she retreated there during the kids' story and didn’t re-emerge. Kaoren took a shower while I was stepping Sen through her Sights exercise, and when I went to find him he’d passed out on our bed, which put an end to my plans to really enjoy finally not being under observation in medical.

Friday, October 17

Laying their plans

Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Ninth and Tenth, Tsur Selkie, and Squad Two arrived while I was having my eye patch removed yesterday morning. They mostly bunked on the Litara, but the Setari building periodically overflowed.

There were only had two things on my personal list of things to do that day: visit Eeli and ravish Kaoren. Since Kaoren had planning meetings scheduled for much of the day, the first seemed easier to accomplish than the second, and I asked Mori and Glade to take me over.

Ista Tremmar was standing by Eeli’s sense-bed when we arrived, and Mori asked her if there’d been any improvement.

"Not yet," Ista Tremmar said. "With head injuries of this nature, there’s not a great deal we can do initially except relieve the pressure. When the swelling has gone down, I’ll have a clearer prognosis."

Eeli was hooked to a machine to keep her breathing. That gave me a jolt, and I found myself only able to look at her in glances. Pale, still, somehow too small for Third’s string bean of energy. I pulled up a chair and picked up her hand, but it was limp and clammy, like the kittens Mimmet had had too early. I put it down carefully.

"Eeli barely seems herself when she’s not moving," Mori said, her voice thick.

"The perpetual motion machine," Glade said, small and shocked.

"I–" I took a breath so my voice was steady, then said: "I’m just going look for something."

I expanded my senses, pushing out. It’s easy to do now, at least when there’s lots of people around. Little points of life, with fainter hazes for plants, and the Setari bright blazes. I kept looking, pushing out, until I noticed a new bright blaze next to me. Kaoren.

Pulling back to myself, I took another steadying breath then opened my eyes, and wiped them.

"Sorry," I said. I tilted my head back so I could see Kaoren. His face was closed, grave. "You can tell, can’t you? That she’s not there."

He nodded.

I made myself pick up Eeli’s hand again, so strange and wrong, and pressed the back of it to my cheek, just for a moment. Then I got up and hugged Mori, who was crying, touched Glade’s arm and let Kaoren take me away.

We went to the top of the Setari building, and sat on a bench beneath fresh green leaves. I didn’t try to speak for a long time, till the blow was something manageable.

"Does Taarel know?" I asked, eventually.

"Only that it’s unlikely she’ll recover," Kaoren said. "Sight is not an absolute in these cases."

"Eeli would hate so much missing out on seeing Taarel with hair cut short." My voice wobbled, and I stopped, then curled my fingers tighter through Kaoren’s, leaning into his side. "Nils told me most frightening thing about me is I could bring people back."

Kaoren’s horror was clearly transmitted everywhere we touched. He drew a breath.

"Don’t worry," I said. "I know – I think she wouldn’t want that. I know you wouldn’t. I’m not sure if–" If Kaoren died, I have no idea how I’d react, but I like to think I would be strong enough not to make a copy of him. "I guess it’s really not that different from making projections living people," I said. "Even projecting only the part of Eeli which isn’t there. But it wouldn’t last and it wouldn’t be real. And that would make it worse than awful."

Kaoren stayed with me for quite a while, attending the strategy meeting virtually. I didn’t feel babysat, just supported, and the way Kaoren had instantly been called out of his meeting to be with me feels like good sense when a few months ago I might have resented being treated as a so-fragile flower. The moment when it occurred to me that I could try to fix Eeli gave me a better appreciation for why the Nuran Setari are dubious about me, and why there’s an entire team of lawyers trying to draft an interplanetary agreement on what I’ll be permitted to do.

I really don’t want to know what the Cruzatch want me to do.

It was necessary to talk Kaoren out of keeping Fourth at Pandora, though. It’s not that I don’t want him here, and aren’t just a little worried about sleeping without him – not to mention having to struggle with the spectre of him in Eeli’s place – but I’ve seen how useful his Sights are in combat. Taking control of Oriath is important, and I want them to have every chance of coming through that battle without any more injuries.

Fortunately I managed to control myself overnight, replaying the otters visualisation, and only having one minor nightmare near dawn: nothing to give anyone reason to second-guess or change all the planning from yesterday. All the squads on Muina, including parts of Eighth, have gone, with considerable air support. The ships will be at the attack site soon, and they want me to visualise just before they arrive so they know how the Cruzatch react. Given the length of the visualisation, and the fact that I’ll be in real-space, I’m almost certain to pass out after that, though I’m going to try and stay awake.

I’m really glad Siame’s here. I’m sure she’s worried about Kaoren as well – and she’s not going to stop disliking me any time soon – but she’s really helped me keep the atmosphere upbeat with the kids. They’re tense, of course, but Siame’s certainty that KOTIS is well prepared to take Oriath makes a big difference.

Saturday, October 18

Timing is everything

I’d tried valiantly to stay awake. My minders for the projection were Taarel and Sefen from Third, both of whom were just wounded enough to be disqualified for the attack, and spent their time tense and tightly controlled because they really wanted to be with the attack force, and are so angry and upset about Eeli. But Taarel stepped me effortlessly through the projection, and obligingly took me back to my apartment afterwards, where I promptly fell asleep on the couch, right in the middle of the battle.

But Siame was right to be confident, and the Setari rolled right over the dozens of Cruzatch waiting for them.

The battle was over almost as soon as it began, and Phase Two – establishing a defensible position – swung into operation. My sleep was occupied by an awareness of Siame giving Ys and Rye a basic combat exercise while Sen watched. Then Siame went out of the apartment – to get dinner apparently – and as soon as she was gone Lira was standing next to me. And my energy-use readings kicked up to dangerous, alerting medical.

Sen made the chirpy little noise she uses half as greeting and half as question – she’s always willing to treat newcomers as potential friends. Ys and Rye’s reaction was far less welcoming – Rye even took on a correct combat stance – but they’re smart kids and we had told them about Lira, so after a pause Ys said: "You know that you make her sick when you use her to come here."

Lira looked immensely offended, and glanced down at me in an angry, dismissive way which I suspect was a disguise for guilt.

"Are you three her sisters and brother?" she asked then. "And that older one?"

"Siame is Kaoren’s sister," Rye said. He’s always very careful and correct about our relationship, and his voice wobbled a little when he added: "We are Cassandra and Kaoren’s wards."

"Sweetheart!" Sen announced happily, snuggling herself between me and the back of the couch. "Ys, Rye, Sen," she added, pointing to each in turn, ending up with: "Lira."

Lira looked like she’d bitten a lemon, but turned back to Ys: "Is it true what he said? Has Nuriath fallen?"

"Hundreds of years ago," Ys said, bluntly. "Most people died straight away. Some survivors went through the Ena to different worlds and for a long time no-one lived on Muina at all, because something would kill them. Then Cassandra came and made it possible for people to live here, and they built this settlement, which is called Pandora. But whatever happened long ago is causing the walls between the Ena and real-space to tear apart, and there are Ionoth called Cruzatch who keep attacking, and they destroyed the world we come from. They keep trying to kidnap Her."

When Ys decides to talk, she’s unsparing. I loved the obvious capitalisation on Her.

"I heard Naranezolen say that they’re running out of time. That it’s not any more about self-reliance. They need another to work with me or it will be the Tzarazatch," Lira said, distress starting to leak through. "But I don’t know for what – I’m not doing anything. Whenever they see me they chase me away. What–"

Ys, surprising me, stepped up and gripped Lira by the upper arms. "You need to stop now. Come back another time, or you’ll make Her too sick. She’ll help you if she can. She’s soft like that. See if they say anything about a big fight today."

After a moment’s offended glaring, Lira obediently disappeared. I woke myself, and struggled to sit up with Sen half-sitting on me, and weights of exhaustion attached to my whole body. The apartment door opened to show Siame, Taarel and one of the medics – Rye’s response to Lira’s appearance had been to immediately contact Siame. She’d brought Taarel and the medic, but they’d held off entering so as not to startle Lira.

"Lira’s been observing us," I said, as Ista Mezan gave me a fortifier to drink. I looked at Ys and added: "She waited until Siame left so she could talk to you three."

"Perhaps she feels a link to someone her own age," Taarel said, steadying my hand, which had started shaking enough to slop fortifier down my front.

"Did the attack–?" I began, then choked as she tipped the fortifier down my throat.

"No injuries. They’re going on with Phase Three."

Phase Three was finding all the tears into near-space in the area and putting boxes around them, since the theory was that the Cruzatch could only access real-space through the marbles or the tears, but couldn’t pass through the unbroken parts of the wall between near-space and real-space. I didn’t get any more explanation than that at the time, since I couldn’t stay awake any longer. I guess it was Taarel who changed my clothes, and she was nice enough to put me in my own bed rather than parking me in medical. I was conked out for about fourteen hours – a stretch which made Sen coming and climbing on me rather perilous for my bladder.

Of course, now I’m awake, Kaoren’s asleep, though he sent me an email telling me everything which had happened. It was a fast fight, but the Cruzatch kept coming back until the last of the nearby tears was boxed in. They’re remaining on high alert.

I don’t like Kaoren being away, but funnily enough I find Siame’s presence almost as comforting as the kids do. She’s just as habitually in-charge as Kaoren, and Kaoren’s absence means she feels free to organise me. And watching Ys stubbornly ignore her and organise herself, Rye and Sen is highly amusing.

Wednesday, October 22

Zilla

The day after we took Oriath, I spent a morning medical chatting to Kaoren, asking him questions about the battle and describing the cloud of happiness Rye had been floating around on because Kaoren had told him well done for contacting Siame so promptly. When I’m in-quarters the kids come and have lunch with me rather than sticking at the school, and we were sitting in a circle on the floor around our coffee table/dining table experimenting with the latest products of the culinary division, who spend their days in a state of bliss with a whole new world of food to play with.

I was feeling very queer and bothered and couldn’t work out why, and found that Sen and Siame were both watching me attentively, and when I asked why Siame said she could see a shadow behind me, and Sen chirped up with "Lira come now?" Since I didn’t feel the least bit like sleeping, I contacted Taarel and warned her that I was going to try expanding my senses, and she said that was okay, but told me to remember to use the scanner to record, and she stayed in-channel to watch. I managed to expand my senses fine, but that just made me feel even more queer and bothered, so I tried to create a projection of Lira, and that worked.

She was looking impatient and cross and said: "You are very dull and unnoticing," to me.

I smiled at her. "I know – I’m very bad at being alert. But is nice be able talk to you directly."

"I listened for them talking about an attack, like she said," Lira went on, glancing at Ys. "They were all very annoyed, but also pleased because they’d thought of a good thing to do. It’s something about you. I’ve been trying and trying to tell you." She was highly aggrieved, anger hiding worry.

"Did they give any details?" Siame asked sharply.

"Only that they would stop something from being called. They were very pleased."

I reached out experimentally – it’s so difficult for me to move while all expanded – and touched her hand, which felt solid and entirely normal. "Thank you, Lira," I said. "I wish I could find where you are."

I let the projection slip, and came back to myself as Siame was rapping out orders to the kids. The differences in dialect means I’m only translating Lira clearly in retrospect, but we’d all gotten the gist. Siame told us we were to go straight downstairs, to the level which is below ground and easiest to defend. There was an alert flashing over the interface – Taarel had put KOTIS staff on ready status and told the greensuits stationed at the amphitheatre to summon the Ddura immediately.

If I’d been a little less thick, if I’d realised sooner that Lira was trying to communicate, they’d still be alive. Two women and a man, Keeri Nell, Evva Nozen, and Barl Miks. The Cruzatch got them before they reached the platform. All I knew at the time was that as we came out onto the inner balcony, we abruptly shifted from a level two alert to a level five, which covers everyone in Pandora and means there’s Ionoth on the loose and everyone’s to take shelter.

Taarel came flying abruptly up to our floor, enhanced herself, and dropped us all down to the ground floor, where Bryze from Eighth was waiting. It was not as if Pandora was completely without Setari defenders – there was a Nuran, Mila, and various members of Third and Eighth – five of them not too injured to fight. And quite a lot of greensuits, and mounted weapons at certain key points. But as Tsur Selkie said later, the Ddura had made us complacent.

Bryze enhanced as well, but then kind of groaned, and we all froze looking out the big (fortunately closed) plate-glass doors over the lake, and the Cruzatch just outside. I gather that there were two groups, each numbering around thirty, one of which had hit the amphitheatre and the other had gone straight for the Setari building. That little fact is the cause of a great deal of consternation, because it means that the Cruzatch either can track me effortlessly, or had a very good idea of the layout of Pandora.

Taarel said: "Go!" to Siame, and sent us scurrying out of the common room. A haze came up to cover the outer doors – the Setari building has a good set of shields which can be brought up sectionally – but I could hear yelling and a crash off toward the direction we were heading. The Cruzatch had surrounded the entire building, and found a way in through the school, then torn through the physical barriers which had automatically sectioned off the Setari area, damaging some of the shield transmitters in the process.

Siame stopped short, then shooed us backward. The common room atrium is a very open area, and I glanced around frantically, spotted one couch which was set against the wall, and told Ys and Rye to take Sen and hide behind it. Trouban from Eighth dropped down from the upper levels, clutching a couple of the new breathing masks, and he, Bryze and Taarel headed toward the sounds of fighting at double-pace just as the Cruzatch came in

They moved like a swarm of spiders, racing over walls and ceiling, and while the tight entrance meant that Bryze was able to take out a whole bunch of them in a single shot, the way the common room opens up meant they could quickly spread out and get behind the three Setari.

I’m quite proud that I managed to dodge the net one of them threw at me. It’s about the only time I’ve managed to properly dodge anything, and I did it with a stylish tumbling roll which looked like I’d rehearsed it. Unfortunately, all this earned me was a burnt arm, because another Cruzatch swooped down, grabbed me above the elbow, and tossed me on top of the fallen net. I have deeply-burned claw marks again and am extremely sorry I wasn’t wearing my nanosuit – a sleeveless T, cargo pants and no shoes do not make an adequate combat outfit.

To my horror, Ys ran over and tried to bat the Cruzatch out of the air with a chair (which she could barely lift, let alone hit things with) and I grabbed her back against my chest and curled around her as it took a lazy swipe in retaliation – one thing which was clear was that they didn’t want to damage me too much, so it was the best way to protect her, though this meant that when they inverted the net and hauled me into the air, Ys came too.

The Setari (and Siame) of course weren’t just sitting back while this was going on, but there were so many Cruzatch and in an enclosed space with civilians about, they couldn’t be very wild using elementals, and were struggling not to be straightforwardly slaughtered. The Cruzatch seemed to intend a quick snatch and grab, which kept the casualty numbers down, but also made them very hard to counter. Bryze was very badly injured trying to stop them from hauling me off, but they say he’ll recover.

By this time, Kaoren, Maze and Tsur Selkie were in channel with me, which was an exercise in frustration for them, and only served as a distraction for me. Kaoren told me to try breaking individual strands of the net, but it seemed to be made of some kind of rubber (vaguely resembling the stuff they’d used to build the traps around Kalasa’s platforms) and would only stretch a little – not nearly enough to make a Cass-sized hole. It was also very hard to do anything while being banged around corners.

And then we were outside, soaring straight out over the lake toward what was later determined to be their entrance point, a tear on the far bank of the southern hook of the lake. Siame was the only defender who’d managed to follow straight away – she doesn’t have Combat Sight, but she’s a stronger Light talent than Kaoren, more on Lohn’s level, and since she hadn’t enhanced was able to shoot Light bolts at the Cruzatch carrying me. It was dodging very well, but one of the bolts went through the top of the net, spilling Ys and me down into the lake.

I wasn’t prepared for the drop, but managed to keep a hold of Ys and was lucky to take the impact on my shoulder. After a disoriented and panicky flounder we surfaced and Ys, coughing and gasping, nearly pushed me under again. At least the water made my burned arm stop hurting quite so horribly.

Siame was just above us, trying to fend off three Cruzatch at once. I turned in the water, and saw that we were quite close to Tupal Rock – the stony cluster which is the nearest island to Pandora. I told Ys to climb on my back, and managed a sluggish breast-stroke, and was trying to angle to the lower side when Siame and one of the Cruzatch fell out of the sky.

They landed very close, the Cruzatch producing a big hiss of steam. Taarel had shown up by then, racing two more Cruzatch, and took on the pair Siame hadn’t killed. Siame barely seemed to be swimming, so I detached Ys and asked her if she thought she was able to swim to the rock and when she nodded I sprinted to Siame as she started to sink. Her Kalrani uniform doesn’t provide half the protection of the nanoliquid suits, let alone built-in close combat weapons, and she’d been clawed across her abdomen, deep enough to do serious damage. She’s still alive, but facing a long, painful recovery.

By the time I hauled her to Tupal Rock, Mila had joined Taarel, but they were both injured and struggling, and more Cruzatch were arriving from the group which had attacked the platform: a cloud of burning black moving in for the kill. Mila and Taarel were magnificent, fighting back-to-back, managing even as the numbers grew higher to keep all the Cruzatch’s focus on them, picking off any who dropped toward me. But there were so many.

During the short swim to the rock, I kept thinking that Eeli wouldn’t be able to bear it if Taarel died as well, and searching desperately for the best thing I could do to stop that from happening, telling myself that I’m powerful enough that they need to make laws about me, and could surely manage a few judicious lightning bolts.

I hauled Siame as high on the rock as I could manage, and told Ys to hold her there, then found a dip I could wedge myself into. "I’m going to try to help," I told Ys as I muted my interface distractions. "Be careful not to touch me."

There’s quite a few scanners stationed along the Pandora shoreline, so when I woke I could watch what happened next on the news. I didn’t have much of a view of it at the time – my perception is really vague when I’m expanded and I was concentrating very hard and only had my eyes open part of the time. They keep showing the whole sequence over and over again – Siame pursuing the Cruzatch with me and Ys in the net, and then us falling into the water and Siame’s fight against them (Kaoren says she did extremely well) and then the expanded battle above us while I was trying to get Siame to the rock. And then Ys desperately trying to hold on to Siame and staunch her bleeding while I’m just sitting there very still with my eyes closed – like I’d gone into extreme denial.

Then the dragon shows up.

I’d abandoned the idea of lightning bolts almost immediately – there’s no way I can aim while expanded. And I’ve known for ages that I can create Ionoth, after all. A dragon wasn’t an obvious choice – most of them are evil in stories – but my mind had frozen when trying to think of really powerful flying things who could pwn a few dozen Cruzatch really quickly. I almost did Superman, but realised at the last moment that the sun mightn’t be the right sort. And then I thought of Maze toasting dozens of Cruzatch, and thought of dragon breath.

Spirited Away was one of my favourite movies growing up, and there was a hint of river-spirit dragon in what I created: white with highlights of blue and gold, long in body, but with vast wings. And huge. It dove into view to snatch up two Cruzatch which were dropping toward me, and opening these truly incredible wings with a snap which echoed across the lake. It threw the two Cruzatch into the water as it started upward, and the gale was incredible, making me struggle to not lose focus.

I’m so glad that Taarel and Mila chose to pull free from the Cruzatch cloud at the dragon’s appearance – I’m not sure I could have lived with it if they’d been crisped when the dragon tilted down again and breathed.

Dragonzilla. It was Light, not Fire. The kind of beam which you see in mecha anime which scorches a mile-long ridge into the landscape and cuts through mountains. It evaporated the swarm of Cruzatch just as they clustered in preparation for attacking and then scored down into lake, creating a great whomping cloud of steam.

And the energy cost for that hit me like a tank. I promptly passed out and toppled into the lake.

Poor Ys. She hates so much anyone seeing her when she’s upset, and everyone on three planets has watched her frantic horror as she tries to keep hold of Siame while snatching at me as I drop. She couldn’t keep me from going into the water, and wasn’t strong enough to pull me out of it while keeping Siame in place, but she did manage to lift my head enough so that I was only a little bit drowned when Trouban from Eighth dropped down (half-fell, he was in bad shape) and joined us on the rock, while Taarel and Mila cleared up the few Cruzatch which had escaped the dragon.

I so should have yelled Expecto Patronum. Talk about missed opportunities.

I’ve been unconscious for the last couple of days, and I suspect I’ve damaged my projection talent again like I did with the Kalasa projection, but I got off a lot better than the Setari and Siame. Fourth, Sixth and the other parts of Eighth were sent back immediately, and things have been relatively quiet since – the expeditionary force digging in to work on the shielding around the new site, and the Cruzatch not as yet testing them again.

KOTIS has copped a lot of flak for leaving Pandora/me inadequately defended, which they’ve been taking a mea culpa attitude to, although the first battle at Oriath was so intense that going with fewer would have meant far more injuries, and they don’t dare pull any more squads from Tare and Kolar. The injury list just keeps climbing, and they’ve made active as many of the Kalrani as they’re willing to risk at this stage.

Kaoren was sitting beside me when I woke, looking so tired that I have extreme doubts he managed any real sleep the entire time I was unconscious. I suspect he and Sen were plagued by Sight dreams, since she didn’t look much better by the time I got back to our apartment (after a meal, another long sleep and a medical exam). I’m writing this propped against Kaoren’s arms on our couch, with Sen sprawled down one side of us. Both of them passed out almost as soon as we sat down. Ys and Rye looked pretty wrung out as well (if Sen’s not sleeping, they’re generally not sleeping either), but held out to have quite a long conversation with me about dragons and to grimace at me fiercely or blush and look at the floor depending on their inclination when I told them what I thought of their bravery.

Rye fell asleep sitting on the floor propped against the couch, after a long period of gazing up at Kaoren with unblinking devotion. Ys went and fetched him a pillow, and then my diary when I asked her for it, and actually tolerated me thanking her, and has stayed close playing with her modelling toy while I write – she’s growing quite adept at using it, and seems to most enjoy making copies of Pandora’s buildings. She’s very exacting and precise.

I’ve been amusing myself using the scanner to record this scene for posterity, and also having interface conversations with a selection of almost everyone I know on the planet. The recurrent theme has been: "That bat-surri was incredible." It certainly made an impression on the collective imagination, and the interface sites are full of discussion about it, and me. The fact that I can outgun the Setari in a suicidal one-shot kind of way has certainly strengthened the "we need to make some laws about the touchstone" brigade. On a plus side there’s a ton of positive comments about Siame (quickly identified as Kaoren’s sister) and Ys.

I’m glad I was able find a way to fight back – and OMG I can make dragons – but wish I could have just paid enough attention to realise that Lira was trying to talk to me.

Thursday, October 23

Mine

Third and Eighth have been sent back to Tare, with only two of them lacking a significant injury. Eeli’s still here, though, because the medics are worried about the impact of taking her through deep-space. Not one of Third could stand leaving her behind, and Taarel sent them off to the ship with her head high and her eyes hard.

Siame can’t be moved either, but at least is periodically conscious. I went down to see her, but she likes me even less now – or is just too ill to disguise how little she wants to do with me. Other than not being able to project, I’m feeling fine today, with my burn thoroughly medicated.

The expeditionary force is having immense trouble working through the shielding at the Oriath site – it’s on par with the shielding around Kalasa – but they’ve made a lot of progress setting up warning drones and creating a little fortress, dense with shields and bristling with weapons. Even without the Setari there, anyone inside the bunker could probably defend themselves against all but a massive attack. They’re waiting for the next Cruzatch assault (should there be one) before sending any more squads back, so they can gauge how sufficient it is, but two more of the Nuran Setari have returned.

The shielding on the talent school hadn’t been brought up during the Cruzatch attack because some of the kids were still outside and couldn’t get inside quickly enough, and that’s led to a revision of both the school and Pandora’s Ionoth safety procedures. The proposed solution is emergency shelters outside some of these outlying buildings. Shielded shelters are a seriously sensitive subject for the Nurans, of course, but for certain critical buildings KOTIS Command has decided they can’t risk leaving them open.

The question of whether there are spies for the Cruzatch here is also causing a headache. It’s obvious to suspect the Nurans – and unfortunately this suspicion seems to be focused on the Nuran Setari – but it could be anyone on Muina, Tare or Kolar. Someone, after all, told the Nurans about me after I unlocked Muina. Thankfully practically no-one knows we’ve made contact with Lira – not that she’s probably able to manifest at the moment with my talents taking a time-out. KOTIS Command hasn’t decided whether to move me, pretend to have moved me, or even use me as bait.

At any rate, the kids are out of school for the moment because their presence reveals mine, and all of us are confined to the Setari building. They’re quite happy about this. Sen because it means she spends more time with me, Rye because he gets to spend more time with Kaoren, and Ys because she doesn’t have to spend any time with the children at the school.

The Setari building feels so deserted with only Fourth in residence. Mila, Orial and Korinal aren’t tremendously social, and are often away mediating issues with the Nurans. Having the common room to themselves (windows set to be one-way) turned into a great game for Sen, who gleefully collected every cushion and made a massive mound of them, and kept climbing on top and rolling down the sides. Ys and Rye didn’t try to stop her, just made sure there wasn’t anything to hit. I sat on the table watching all three of them, not failing to notice how Ys and Rye would occasionally check the entrances of the room for annoyed adults. I’m pretty sure if someone had been mad they would have pretended it was all their idea and taken any blame.

I know they’ll always be ready to do anything for Sen, but I am hopeful that one day the shadow of House Renar won’t sit above them so strongly. They are improving. When it’s just Kaoren and me with them, they’re more inclined to show preferences in what to do each evening, and even Ys now asks questions if she can’t work out an answer using the interface. Though that’s becoming rarer – she’s formidably intelligent.

It’s so fun to watch Rye light up whenever Kaoren arrives, although today with a brief double-check to make sure that playing with cushions was allowed. It’s also pretty damn cool watching Kaoren’s response. I think the outright worship embarrasses him a little, but he really enjoys encouraging Rye, and says he has to keep resisting a temptation to show off for him.

It was a quiet day. Fourth had the morning free – or as free as they’re allowed to be when they’re the only squad on site – and Kaoren was in interface meetings, which is why I took the kids downstairs. In the afternoon we trained together. Since Halla is mildly injured, she was assigned to training with me, and Kaoren delighted Rye by having her include the kids in our training as well.

Isten Notra is coming to the Setari building tomorrow to discuss the conclusions she’s come to from all the data my projections and dreams have given her. Of course, she could just tell us that over the interface, but since it appears that Lira can observe me, Isten Notra is hoping to tell Lira what she thinks happened.

Which is a cruel, hard thing, but I completely agree with Isten Notra that only the truth will do.

Friday, October 24

Planet Drac

Last night’s attack on Oriath involved a full force of Cruzatch, plus a massive and attendants.

This time Taren and Kolaren technology ruled the day. Tare has tremendous problems fighting massives, because almost all their land surface is covered by buildings. Kolar has huge amounts of land surface, though all their cities are in two relatively small regions (parts of which are in permanent night, or permanent twilight, which leads to some great stories about things living in the dark), but while Kolar has difficulty dealing with small and medium Ionoth, with massives it usually just bombs the shit out of them.

KOTIS had expected exactly this tactic from the Cruzatch, and had been preparing launchers for missiles, which they promptly used to rain fiery destruction from the skies after checking that it wasn’t the type which could reflect missiles. The Cruzatch plainly don’t want to do any damage to this site, and hadn’t brought the massive through right on top of it – hoping no doubt to lure the Setari away into battle. So a nice, comprehensive victory (which still involved a lot of mopping up work for the Setari at Oriath, but hasn’t been nearly as fraught and injury-intensive).

This is by far the most protected of the malachite marble installations, and the shielding continues to delay further exploration. I’m still holding out hope for Our Secret Plan and How to Foil It, but I think it’s no longer critical to find it, because we have Isten Notra.

The meeting was down in the common room, giving Isten Notra a chance to view the smoky spots and gouges on the walls which the pinksuits haven’t quite found time to erase. The physical attendees were limited to Isten Notra, Tsur Selkie, me and Kaoren, with not even any of Isten Notra’s minions along, but the audience over the interface surprised me. Not just Pandora’s most senior bluesuits and the senior Setari representatives – Maze, Zee, Grif, Raiten, Inisar and Korinal – but about a dozen people whose names I had to look up: highest-echelon representatives from Tare and Kolar.

Isten Notra had brought one of the tablecloth screens with her, and started out by displaying a map of Muina with the platform towns highlighted.

"While much of what I’m about to discuss is not currently provable," she began, "we now have enough pieces that we are prepared to treat it as a working assumption. Given the increasing urgency of the situation, the recommendations I make today cannot wait for certainty, for the kind of expertise of those who built this system.

"The platform and Pillar system is a magnificent achievement, layering function upon function. The feed towns do not turn moonlight into aether, as you once suggested Caszandra. Instead they are drawing the substance of the Ena into real-space, and refining it – patterning it, if you will – so that it can be used as a power source: one so versatile it can even recognise and heal Muinans. The presence of the moon appears to be a control mechanism, to manage the volume produced, although there is some suggestion in the documentation recovered that the gravitational pull of the moon assists in safely thinning the wall between real-space and the Ena.

"The amount of aether needed to power the shielding dome at Kalasa, the teleportation platforms, and the Pillars is a fraction of the total aether produced by the feed towns, and the Pillars themselves appear to serve the dual function of stabilising the near region of deep-space and providing a storage channel for the excess aether. The whole system is integrated, and while it is likely those who built it intended to create further platforms, and to use the aether for other devices, maintaining a delicate balance would be paramount, for drawing and using the stuff of the Ena in real-space poses a monstrous risk, as we are all now well-aware."

Isten Notra glanced at the tablecloth screen and green dots appeared, showing the locations of the malachite marbles.

"Enter a parasite system," she said, sounding exactly like Agowla High’s headmistress that time half of Year 11 held a panty-shot scavenger hunt. "When the platform and Pillar network was activated, the wall between real-space and the Ena began to tear like a cloth under strain, despite all the calculations of its creators. This secondary system is most likely the cause."

She changed the display again, this time to a schematic of the site at Oriath – the outline of the underground rooms revealed by the scanners – and highlighted one in particular, at the very centre of facility.

"This room is the exact proportions of the aether-filled chamber Caszandra was trapped within, and projected for us." She zoomed in to the room, and though the scan was a little blurry, it was clear that the central pedestal was there. She replaced the image with a scan of the room I’d projected. "The diagrams covering the walls and ceiling appear to be symbolic references to the aether inflows – the platforms – and you will see from this projection that the aether is not simply contained in the room, but is slowly moving through it on spiralling paths from ceiling to floor. Scanner readings taken from the projection are not to be relied upon, but their measurement would suggest that the visible aether is merely leakage, and that a vast amount of aether is being channelled by this structure. It is probable that half, or even a majority of all the aether collected on Muina is being consumed by this room."

The image shifted to a close-up of the pedestal and the shrouded figure weighed down by tiny malachite marbles. I flinched a little inside, having no way of knowing whether Lira was watching, hating the thought of what was beneath that shroud.

"We believe these orbs represent the power stones placed across Muina," Isten Notra was saying. "You will note that if that correlation is true, we have three still to uncover. Those diagrams on the walls which do not relate to the platforms are considered likely to represent the large power stones. While the platforms are the power inlet, it appears that these power stones – large and small – are an outlet channel, drawing away and also consuming part of the aether output. Using the placement of the smaller stones in this projection, we have identified areas recommended for scouting."

Then she held up a small audio player and I winced, recognising the creepy whisper from my dream.

"We have spent considerable time attempting to enhance and separate the auditory component of Caszandra’s projection. Multiple voices are speaking at once, and we are working with the theory that each voice is transmitted by one of the stones. We have separated the clearest."

She played one of the whispers, almost incomprehensible to me still since it was old Muinan and mostly names. Isten Notra had a translation which basically said "In [place], the immutable [person] has dominion over [this particular area]. The immutable [person] and [person] are as his left and right hands. No power is greater than the immutable [person] in [place], and nothing has strength to wound or weary or naysay his will. Beneath his power will dwell the immutable [person]…" And so on and on and on. I hadn’t projected long enough for them to capture the full length of it, but it was all about the immutable this and that and how they lived at the pleasure of the person in charge of that area. Some of the whispers are male and some are female, and so far as they’ve been able to tell all the whispers are along the same lines, but with different areas and different people.

Isten Notra continued to speak aloud, even when directly addressing our interface audience: "It is believed that the shrouded figure in this room is the previously known touchstone, a child at the time of the disaster. Those of you who have observed the logs of Caszandra’s testing sessions will be aware that a touchstone is able to create a projection of any object or place described to her, including fictional places." She let out a faint sigh. "The Ena is not a realm governed by simple physics. Our histories and our investigations suggest it is an expression of the minds of – not necessarily sentients – but of the living. It is the memory of hunters and hunted, of places etched strongly in thought and hopes and fears. In each of these power stone installations, barring the lack of sarcophagi at Kalasa, we have found a combination apparently of the willing and the unwilling, all of whom may have been consumed. We believe they were using both the touchstone, the aether, and the lives of those within the installations to attempt an act of creation."

"Something more than becoming Cruzatch?" asked one of the bluesuits. "Surely they could not have done all this for such an existence?"

"No. A grander ambition altogether. These are the projections of the location Caszandra has repeatedly visited in a dream state, where it appears some remnant of the previous touchstone’s consciousness has been trapped. Our initial belief was that this was Muina’s past, but I am now inclined to believe that what Caszandra has glimpsed is instead the end product of these machinations. A space perhaps in the Ena or possibly even separate to it – sealed and unreachable, maintained by the power system of the platforms. Created by their will, and by fixing their description of this place in the mind of a child whose connection with the Ena is profound. They tailored themselves a world."

"Then what are the Cruzatch?" I asked.

Isten Notra brought up the image of the weird balloon-tent room from my dream. "This has been interpreted by Sight Sight talents as a gate. It is obviously not a physical throughway. Still, to those who created a world which depends on this one for survival, there is an obvious need to access real-space. For decades we have been confused by a number of spaces where Cruzatch have appeared to belong to those spaces, generating regularly, but with the advice of our Nuran partners we have concluded that those spaces were a consequence of living creatures reacting to incursions of Cruzatch into their worlds – a secondary instance of them. The true Cruzatch are outside our experience of traditional Ionoth, and we believe they are either aether devices controlled by those living on the parasite world, or even projections of their minds."

She displayed an image of the impossibly tall and golden people. "These are almost certainly the rulers of that world, and perhaps even the originals of the conspiracy on Muina, remade and sustained by the power stone system. To them, our activities must pose a direct and absolute threat. As we have grown more active in the Ena, so have they become more active in attempting to prevent our expansion.

"The fact that they are so eager to gain control of Caszandra suggests that just as we are experiencing increasing problems with the tearing of the spaces, the world they have created is not stable. Clearly they were unable, with a single touchstone, to create a world which existed independently of Muina. Now, the instability their system created in real-space is threatening their parasite world. It is probable that their activities on Nuri were an attempt to bolster their world’s existence, spending lives to create stability. It is possible that Nuri is not the first world the Cruzatch have used so."

There was a little silence.

"And does this solve our problem?" asked Tsaile Staben, voice brisk and tight. "What impact if the power stone system is removed?"

"Unknowable." Isten Notra’s mouth disappeared into wrinkles for a moment. "Suddenly removing the destabilising force is unlikely to be achieved without consequences. We will be forced to take an immense risk, and it would most certainly be disastrous to remove them sectionally. It is critical that we locate all of the power stones before tampering with them."

She turned to me. "Now – before we shift to the question of action. Caszandra, during your projection of this space, you objected with some considerable distress to the idea of moving the covering from the shrouded figure. Did you have any impression of consequences to that action?"

I hadn’t been expecting to have to contribute, but at least have grown less easy to fluster, and so I thought before I answered.

"Something was going to change," I said. " I felt that looking would…"

I broke off, because my voice trembled, and Isten Notra smiled at me comprehendingly.

"The act of observation makes real? With the Ena, that is a factor which we will need to keep in mind when dealing with the question of what is beneath that shroud after thousands of years." She moved on to technical details about the stresses on the walls between real space and the Ena, and the increasing rate of growth of the tears, and what we could expect to happen if we didn’t do something soon. And that we had to prepare the three planets for the high probability that interplanetary travel would be cut off at least temporarily if the platform/Pillar structure is damaged by the removal of the power stones.

The chickens have decided which way to run. It’s just a matter of managing it before the sky falls. My job in all this is to recover, keep in hiding, and maybe do some visualisations. Most importantly, no dates with Cruzatch.

After the meeting ended, I took Isten Notra to visit our quarters and see the kids. She called Ys valiant, which made Ys go all pink instead of glaring like a basilisk. Ys has a lot of respect for Isten Notra.

Kaoren sat through a second meeting about the spread of resources for searching for the other malachite marbles. They’ve decided to import some of the older Kalrani for these theoretically easy missions and will be splitting off the spares from Fourth to captain these junior squads as provisional Fifteenth and Sixteenth squads. Toren and Dae don’t know that yet.

It’s Siame’s forty-fifth birthday soon (fifteen). I asked Kaoren what the Taren custom is for birthdays (they usually only celebrate every fifth, with fifty being the really major one). In Earth-years Kaoren will be twenty-one soon, and me nineteen, and we need to set birthdays for the kids. Rye will be first, since we think he’s about to turn eleven, and then Sen and Ys a long while from now. Sen’s the only one who any of the Nuran Setari could give even an approximate age for, and we probably won’t ever have their real birthdays. The greysuits had entered a presumed birth date when they’d given them their thorough medical, and we spent some time working them all out in the new Muinan calendar (or the old Lantaren one, since the technicians found what the Lantarens used to call months and days, and have adopted that). We’re in "year one" of the New Muinan calendar – it dates from when I unlocked security access – and since the kids will be Muinan citizens we may as well stick with the Muinan calendar for these things. The year, like the day, is slightly longer than Earth’s, but at least in Muinan-years Kaoren isn’t sixty.

Kaoren grew rather distracted and then quietly annoyed in the middle of the afternoon, and when I asked him why he told me that since my dragon, he and Siame had been getting a lot of email from their parents, who are not unnaturally upset that Siame has been so severely injured. They still don’t approve of the Setari program enough to want Siame to stay in it beyond the absolute minimum, and they want her to come back home to live with them until she’s recovered. Which will take months – having your abdomen sliced into by red-hot claws is not something which can be fixed in a week.

Having to be rescued by me has not helped Siame’s attitude toward being a Setari, for all that she’d been injured rescuing me first, and she’s considering returning home. The thing which tied her most strongly to the Setari was Kaoren, and now that his attention has shifted to me, she feels crowded out, and less inclined to want to be part of KOTIS.

Kaoren is philosophical about this to a degree – he does mainly want Siame to be happy – but he thinks this was a bad time for his parents to start pressing her because she’s still very ill. I gave him a long shoulder rub after this conversation and he fell asleep, leaving me to chew over everything Isten Notra had said.

The Photoshop Gods of the Parasite Planet. It sounds like a B movie. And that world is obviously a bad wrong thing which has to be stopped because it’s tearing the universe apart. But I can’t help thinking about a bunch of kids playing with a little cloth ball. They’re just kids. They’re plainly some kind of lower strata beneath the Photoshop crowd. If we destroy the power stones, then we’re killing them.

And Lira.

Saturday, October 25

A Thousand Cats

I spent the morning in medical feebly trying to project. I can do a little – just enough to get a few good dragon pictures for the kids – but it gave me a headache and made me feel mopey about Lira. She’s been trapped for so long, used and then ignored, and I know that almost certainly there’s no living flesh under the shroud in that room. She was trapped there like I briefly was, but had no way out, and all that’s alive of her now is a projection.

And I want to help her because I’m soft like that, but I don’t think there is any way to help her. Part of fixing this problem means dismantling whatever is sustaining Lira’s consciousness. She mightn’t be properly alive, but we’re going to finish her off, and I feel wretched about that, maybe even worse than I do about the kids on the parasite world, who presumably are just living their lives, maybe not even aware that their world is some kind of interplanetary vampire.

Sen could tell I was feeling down and, though it took a while for me to figure out what she was doing, kept fetching things to me in an attempt to distract me. Odd bits of equipment, cushions, clothing, and food from the kitchens. Once I realised what she was trying, I had her sit on the side of my med-chair and played interface games with her until they let me go.

My current role is to stay tucked away so the Cruzatch don’t get me, and to work on my health in the hopes that I can be a spy satellite again. Kaoren had warned me that he’s going to step up my physical training regime, so I wasn’t looking forward to the afternoon, but was entertained at lunch because the ship carrying the Kalrani arrived and I got to watch Toren and Dae’s faces when everyone was brought into a single channel and the provisional squads were announced. The Kalrani – ranging in age from fifteen to seventeen – were all being incredibly correct and yet so very excited. Even the girl I first encountered drooling over Kaoren outside the Sights training area was there, and studiously avoiding catching my eye.

Most everyone went out to the patch of ground the Setari use for training, and the squads did some practice training. I’m still not allowed outside, so Kaoren left me with Halla and Sonn, who proceeded to torture me all afternoon. They’re not bad to me, but I prefer being tortured by Mara. I was particularly pathetic in my dodging and rolling because Something Had Occurred To Me which was well worth capital letters, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Eventually Sonn and Halla just stopped and Sonn said: "What is it?"

I blushed, because she was being patient, and I didn’t think I could answer her. "I think I need to ask Isten Notra something," I said.

"We’ll take a rest then," Sonn said, then surprised me by giving me an almost warm look. "You’re learning," she added.

I puzzled over what she meant as I went and grabbed a towel, and decided that it was a reference to my old issue of not speaking up. Then I sent a channel request to Isten Notra.

"What can I do for you, Caszandra?"

"Isten Notra, who is it who decides whether I’m on second level monitoring or not?"

"A large and squabblesome group of people," she said, then added firmly: "Who are not likely to consider altering that arrangement until this crisis is over."

"I guessed. But – do you have the power to suspend it, just for a few minutes? I want to ask you and Kaoren something, but it’s…I think it would be a bad idea to log it."

Isten Notra took a moment before responding, then said she would make some arrangements, and be over to see me before dinner. After that I was better able to concentrate on not being beaten up by Sonn and Halla, and only told Kaoren that Isten Notra was coming to chat with me. He could tell, I think, that there was more to it, but didn’t ask questions until we three were alone in one of the unused apartments.

Isten Notra settled herself on one of the couches, then nodded to me. "Very well, Caszandra – I’ve suspended your log. You’ve certainly made me curious."

I squeezed Kaoren’s hand first, explaining: "I asked if I could ask you both something off-log." Then I looked at Isten Notra. "This parasite world – would you describe it as an idealised version of Muina, one where the rulers have been made more powerful, given abilities that the ordinary people do not have?"

"A fair enough description," Isten Notra said.

"But, you see, to me that’s – that’s a description of Muina."

I was watching Kaoren, saw his chin lift a fraction as he processed the idea, and his eyes narrowed.

I don’t think it’s often that Isten Notra is surprised, but she paused a long time before saying anything. "You’re suggesting that Muina itself is a projection created by the people of your world?"

Her voice was calm, kind, but the way she said it make it sound like an awful insult. I flushed hard, but stumbled on. "Muina is so like Earth, just better put together. A little larger, with far fewer hot dry areas, a better mix of land and water – and all the water fresh, except for one shallow sea which conveniently happens to provide salt! The trees, the crops, the animals – so many are almost exactly the same, or variations of the kinds found on Earth. The one major difference is that the group of people in charge had psychic abilities which made them more powerful than those they ruled."

"Earth has no tears into the Ena," Kaoren said, his mouth a flat line, his eyes still narrowed. "Nothing you have described about it suggests that it’s sustaining a parasite world."

"But the parasite world is a parasite because they didn’t have enough power to make it permanent, to fix it in place. Something which endured, like my origami cranes. What if Muina was created by a more powerful system, one which wasn’t latching on to something meant for other things. Or if they had two – a dozen – enough touchstones?"

My voice had gone a bit loud, so I stopped, and took a breath and told myself not to be upset.

"And so you take the question to Science and Sight," Isten Notra said, the smile returning to her eyes. "What does Sight say?"

Kaoren shook his head. "Sight Sight is rarely helpful with broad questions. I feel no immediate rejection, but nothing to suggest it’s true, either."

"And I see no way to prove this," Isten Notra said. "If Muina was created, there does not appear to be any active link to the creator, and there is no sign of an external power source maintaining this world. Nor does it show any sign of being located within the Ena. Is there any known place on your world similar to the room with the shrouded child?"

I shook my head, and Isten Notra leaned forward to take my head and briefly squeeze it. "Then I have no answer for you, child. What you suggest may be true, or may simply be fear and fancy. And I suspect I know why it weighs on you."

"We’re going to kill everyone on that planet."

"Very likely. Or they will capture you and place you in a room and finish what they started, with who knows what effect on Muina. Or we will not find all the power stones in time, and everything around us will tear apart. When you are presented hateful choices, you can only measure the cost of not acting." Isten Notra stood up. "But you were wise to ask this off-log. Even though the restrictions against viewing such monitoring are not so easily ignored as you seem to think, I will set a process in place to ensure that logs of your daily life are deleted within the shortest possible timeframe. As for this discussion, I will note that you wished to speak openly about your concerns regarding the destruction of the parasite world, and also that you fear to be used in the way that the child, Liranadestar, was. Your log will restart in two joden."

Nodding to Kaoren she left, and I let out a breath. He sat down, then said: "An interesting irony if we, who have trained our entire lives to kill Ionoth, were a form of Ionoth ourselves."

"That’s not what I meant!" I said, appalled. "It’s totally–"

"Different? How far is the memory of a monster from the active projection of one?" His eyes were still narrowed, thoughtful, and he gave me one of his fractional smiles. "You ask difficult questions at times."

"Projections stop when I stop feeding energy into them. Ionoth are remembered by their spaces and come back," I said. "You – Eeli–"

"Will not. You’ve given yourself your answer." He held out his hand. "Even if Muina was made, it is a true world now, and does no damage by existing. That is certainly the answer I would choose to prefer."

And I will. I have to. Just as I have to accept that we are going to destroy what’s sustaining Lira, because no other option seems workable.

Writing this down doesn’t quite defeat the purpose of arranging to go off-log, but I guess I’m going to have to ensure my diaries are destroyed eventually, and not preserved as part of Muina’s historic record.

Kaoren was more bothered by my questions than he wanted to let on, and this evening has continually tried to shift on top of me in his sleep. I’ve brought Sen into bed with us because she was struggling with her dreams too. I just want this waiting to be over, to have all the power stones found, and gone. And I’m trying to look at that positively, to think of it as saving what can be saved, and at least ending Lira’s pain and confusion.

It’s hard, though.

The expedition at Oriath is hoping to break through the shielding there tonight/tomorrow.

Sunday, October 26

Too Awful

Spoke to Lira last night. It wasn’t a dream. I was asleep in bed with Kaoren and Sen when I felt Lira standing near us, and I woke myself up and she was there standing by the bed looking at us. I wasn’t projecting, and didn’t feel any power drain, so I was pretty surprised by this and only just stopped myself from elbowing Kaoren in the ribs, which wouldn’t have been the nicest way to wake him up – I gripped his hand tightly instead as I said "Hello".

Lira looked at me, and at Kaoren as he lifted his head, then said: "Something’s changed."

"It certainly has, if you can manage to be here all by yourself," I said, sitting up and reaching out to touch her arm. Warm and alive and at least temporarily real. "Thank you for warning us before."

"You were too slow," she told me. "The flying lizard was good, though."

"Were you able to see the meeting we had two days ago?" Kaoren asked (every bit a captain despite being dressed in the Singlet and boxer-briefs he wears to bed). "Where we discussed the site at Oriath and what we believe the people who kidnapped you did?"

"The old woman who kept talking," Lira said, in a flat tone which barely masked tight distress. "What room is it she was talking about?"

"It’s underneath a palace to the south-west of Oriath," Kaoren said evenly. Then, after a brief pause added: "There is a shield about the complex, and today, just now, we succeeded in piercing it. Just before Cassandra woke."

Lira’s no fool, and she knows that there’s something dreadfully wrong with her, and she was being very brave trying to find out more. But she went so terribly white that I couldn’t help myself, and scooped her into my lap and squeezed her hard. She reacted just like Ys, going rigid, but then when I – on the edge of hysteria myself – whispered "I’m sorry" into her ear over and over she suddenly gave a great shudder and clutched me and burst into tears – great, deep choking sobs full of confusion and fear and despair. We proceeded to cry all over each other, waking poor Sen up with a start (though she maintained her characteristic sweetness by patting both of us and making little comforting chirrupy noises and even pattering off and fetching water when we started to calm down).

Kaoren waited us out, no doubt having long discussions over the interface, though he did briefly squeeze my shoulder, despite what his Sights would make that feel like for him. Lira cried herself into limp exhaustion, and then faded away completely.

"Sorry," I said to Kaoren, taking the cup of water Sen was holding at a dangerous angle. "Not very useful to make her cry, but I couldn’t help myself."

"It’s what she’s coming to you for," Kaoren said, briefly resting his hand on Sen’s head so that she knew he approved of her being helpful. "Liranadestar must be aware that when she is conscious it’s always in projection, that she is not returning to her physical self. And her captors interrupt the projection when they see it, which leaves her in a fragmentary and nightmarish state. It is comfort, more than answers, that she’s seeking."

He didn’t hide that this made him feel just about as bad as it did me. I leaned against him, then took Sen off and made us all hot drinks, and we carefully coaxed her back to sleep and sat up for a couple of hours watching the proceedings at Oriath over the interface. They had, as Kaoren said, only just made a breach in the shield when Lira had appeared, and had been performing scans when Kaoren contacted Maze. They actually waited out my weepy fit, which is going to look great on the mission report. "Pause while Devlin wept."

Then they sent First and Second in with Tsur Selkie, who had gone back to Oriath after the meeting because there’s no other Place/Sight talents there at the moment.

The first floor wasn’t too bad – was more of the same kind of living quarters and masses of dead people that we’d found at Arenrhon, but when they reached the ramp down they found that instead of a shield blocking their path there was…distinct weirdness. The ramp looks like it’s underwater, and Tsur Selkie took a long look at it and then pulled the squads out and sent a drone in instead. The drone (a spider drone about the size and shape of a football but with lots of delicate pointy legs) made it about a third of the way down – measuring increasing pressure the entire way, and then collapsed and stopped transmitting. They sent two drones next time, and kept one at the top of the ramp recording what happened to the other one (which they sent down the ramp at a faster speed). It made it about halfway and then crumpled, metal bending and twisting.

This has rather put a damper on exploration, and they’ve set up drones to measure for any fluctuation in energy readings and eventually decided more Place Sight talents were now necessary, so they’re swapping First and Ninth for Fourth, while sending Seventh back to Tare. I have to stay here still, which if it wasn’t for Kaoren being gone would suit me fine, since I really don’t want to go too close to that room. Mara, Zee, Alay and Ketzaren are going to take turns bunking on my couch.

No sign of Lira all day.

Monday, October 27

Ties

Another Cruzatch attack at Oriath last night. They tried to be all sneaky about it, but again preparation and technology defeated them. The greensuits have been taking great satisfaction is setting up very subtle scanners and traps throughout the aboveground palace, and it’s become almost impossible for the Cruzatch to get in to where the research bunker is situated.

Kaoren and Halla completely failed to produce any useful information about the distortion at the ramp, and so they’ve switched to assisting the extremely careful search of the palace and upper floor for any intact information, or Sight impressions, while the technicians try and analyse the tendency of drones to go CRUNCH.

I hate sleeping without Kaoren. I had intended to have Sen in with me, but I ended up staying up very late talking to Mara and nodded off on the couch, so she put me to bed – where I promptly had vague and unsettling dreams about Lira. Not Sight dreams, I think, just ones expressing how sad I felt about her.

It’s very nice having First back though. They’ve a few minor injuries – and two very glum juniors who missed out on getting their captaincies purely due to chance – but First is very much what I need when I don’t have Kaoren around. They’re just such an important part of my life, and having breakfast with them made me feel happy and worried at the same time. They look so worn.

I’m feeling horribly anxious about everyone right now.

Most of the day was filled with training – Mara obligingly including the kids in the torture session, and Lohn whisking them off for games and snacks when they’d run out of pep. She kept me going for much longer, until I could finally escape her and ease my aching bones into a bubble bath. Evil Mara.

I hadn’t been in there very long when Ys surprised me by sending a channel request, and when I accepted it she said flatly: "Lira is in my room."

"She wanted to ask you something?" I asked.

"I showed her how to use my model," Ys said, even more flatly – it was hard to tell if she was annoyed, or daring me to object.

I thought about telling her to make a log (she has the ability now, having flown through infant’s school already), but then said: "Let me know when you’re ready for dinner."

I told Maze, of course, but he agreed that at the moment it was better not to distress Lira, and that if she’d heard anything important she would have come to talk to me. Sen and Rye soon joined Ys, and I settled on the couch listening to them playing Pictionary. If an afternoon with children who don’t run away from her is all I can give Lira, I’m glad to at least give her that. I told Kaoren when he woke up that hearing Ys and Lira both laughing on the same day was almost too much for my feeble mind to process.

Lira left without coming out of Ys' room-nook – I’m willing to bet that breaking down and crying has made her all embarrassed and angry about it – she’s so like Ys. Who came out and glowered at me, and then glowered even more when I hugged her and told her she was a very wonderful person.

We finished off Ys' book at story time, and I said it’s my turn to pick the next one, which I have some plans for, but need to ask permission first.

Tuesday, October 28

Planning a Surprise

Ys' turn for nightmares last night. It’s weird how, even though the kids' rooms aren’t exactly close, I’m still better able to hear them tossing and turning than to notice people sneaking up on me. My kid-sense seems to be far stronger than my combat-sense. I took her a glass of water, and sat with her a little while. Of the three, she’s most aware that Lira is probably not exactly alive, and we had a brief conversation (over the interface because she’s aware Lira watches us) about whether we would be killing Lira by stopping whatever is going on, and whether it’s better to release her from a half-life. Since I’m so confused about the question myself, it was hard to think of a way to be reassuring.

Ys has saved Lira’s (rather good) attempt at creating a statue of a slinking cat, and kept looking at the model unhappily.

It was Zee’s turn on the couch last night, and she was sitting up still when I went to fetch the glass of water, and waited for me to come back. My relationship with Zee has gone weird after my tangle with Nils' dreams. I’m pretty sure she really wants to know what I dreamed, but nothing could make her ask, and I’m busy pretending that there’s no reason she’d be interested and having to stop myself from going: "OH BY THE WAY NILS LOVES YOU!!!1!!!" I’m definitely finding that it’s not fun to know other people’s secrets.

I was glad to talk to Zee though, about the kids and how they’re coping with the dramas, and I particularly wanted to ask her about Siame. The medics are saying she’ll be able to shift out of critical care soon, and I’m struggling with what to do about her current state of mind.

"I’m worried about her making decisions about her future based primarily on being upset because she couldn’t fight three Cruzatch at once. Or because of me."

"Any Kalrani who can bring down even one Cruzatch should be congratulating herself," Zee said. "Nor does it sound like her relationship with her parents is as toxic as her brother’s. No doubt, being Sight Sight talents, they’ll prove to be perfectly tolerable people so long as you’re doing what they think is right."

She was teasing me, and I laughed, and thanked her for letting me vent. Kaoren’s family is one subject he and I don’t seem able to discuss freely. I tried to talk to Zee about Eeli, but had to stop. It’s too hard to talk about Eeli.

On the good news front, Dae’s brand new Fifteenth Squad located one of the remaining malachite marble installations today. Two more to go, and then we…do something.

In the midst of Cruzatch raids and planet-wide marble hunts, KOTIS continues to push ahead with making Pandora a fully-functional colony as quickly as possible. Parts of the manufacturing outer suburb is now operational, more and more apartment buildings have been completed, and including the Nurans we’re coming up on the big twenty thousand residents mark, a number which amazes me.

Once the on-planet manufacturing process was functional, KOTIS Command was able to really move ahead, since they’re now capable of producing the various components for fitting-out the apartments, from power units to waste systems to snotty goop that lives in your ducts and gives you nightmares. Mesiath was due to be made an active settlement this month, but because of the Cruzatch risk and the upcoming "doing something" they’ve postponed putting large numbers of people anywhere but Pandora, where the Ddura is now a near-constant background noise (for me).

All the incoming settlers are warned of the dangers, and are told firmly that they’re taking a big risk coming here. It doesn’t seem to have impacted application numbers greatly. Muina’s so important to so many people, and also represents a big change in quality of life for many. And a big chance to become a land owner for others, judging from some of the discussions broadcast as part of the "forming Muina’s laws" process. Everyone with any kind of interest is putting in their two cents about the next stage of the settlement. Once Pandora’s not only self-sufficient, but able to provide for other colonies, people can start to expand out to the protected areas around other platform towns, and even further out, in individual houses rather than apartment block structures. An awful lot of people seem to have "lord of all they survey" ambitions, and I guess quite a few of them will get that to some extent or another. The designs for farming estates are fascinating, and there’s massive arguments about the process of giving grants for possession.

There were red pears on the table for lunch today and I just stared at them for a long time, and couldn’t bring myself to eat one.

In the afternoon, I asked Maze if I could try to project something rather than do lots of exercise, and when they said okay (because they need to test how my ability to project has recovered) I said I’d need several scanners and all of First Squad’s help, which made them very curious, but they obligingly didn’t press me when I wouldn’t say exactly what I wanted to create. I love that I can tell Maze "nothing anyone will object to" and he can give the go-ahead.

The thing I made was a bookshelf. The double-deep bookshelf where Mum keeps her favourites, and the classic children’s books she used to read me as a kid. Everything from old-fashioned books like Pride and Prejudice, and the picture books which don’t fit on the other bookcases. I had two main aims here – all the things I’ve been longing to read to the kids, and this really massive coffee-table book of Mum’s which was basically "lush and glossy shots of really nice paintings throughout history".

While I did everything I could to maintain the projection, First Squad obliged me by rapidly flipping through for the scanners the particular books I pointed out. I especially wanted the art history book, and explained that I wanted to see if I can get it reproduced physically as a present for Siame’s birthday (so a lot of care was needed in scanning it), and this naturally was a secret. Fortunately, I put so much focus on that one that even when I passed out it endured for about half an hour and they were able to get every page properly scanned.

Having it turned into a book (with suitable translation of the titles) isn’t necessarily difficult, but having it done without everyone on three planets knowing about it and Siame reading it as an interface release before I’d even given it to her is the hard part. Maze is going to try and wangle something. I didn’t even read the kids any of the stories First had scanned for me because I want to wait until after Siame’s birthday, and instead picked a smallish Kolaren book to read to them.

It’s the first time I’ve had a secret from Kaoren, for all it’s a really mild one, but I felt very strange not telling him about it. I think I have enough of an understanding of his Sights to at least not be carrying a big "keeping a secret" flag when he talks to me, though that’s probably working because he’s not here right now. He’s not even sure he’ll be able to make it back for Siame’s birthday.

And no Lira today, which worries me.

Wednesday, October 29

A Heavy Place

I dreamed of the Oriath expedition last night, of Kaoren and Halla and Tsur Selkie comparing their impressions of what was happening to little balls which a technician was tossing down the gravity ramp. They were bouncy rubbery balls which the technician sent ricocheting up and down at the beginning of the ramp, but which then on the next bounce up barely hopped an inch and then squashed flat to the stone, then crumbled.

I watched the next attempt, trying to work out a weirdness which I realised felt like Lira – it felt like Lira was there beside me, though I couldn’t see her. And I realised I could, just barely, hear whispering.

That totally spooked me and I made myself wake up. Ketzaren was sitting on the side of my bed, waiting to see whether I was going to have a crisis, and let me squeeze her hand for a bit before having me explain what I’d been visualising. That, of course, created more than a bit of a problem, because they don’t want to risk me getting mentally trapped again, and don’t want me to be in Pandora if that’s about to happen. Fortunately it was nearly morning and I’d had a reasonable rest, so I wasn’t in immediate danger of passing out or anything, and after some back and forth discussion they decided that a few days back on Tare were in order, just to make sure, but that they could use the opportunity to poke me at the Oriath site first, to see if I could tell them anything useful.

This was a plan which didn’t exactly please anyone, but beyond taking the "nuke the site from orbit" option, the technicians are starting to doubt they can get at the power stone for the Oriath site. Not anywhere near as quickly as we want. So after breakfast Mara stayed at Pandora with the kids, and the rest of First Squad took me to the nearest platform town to Oriath, where we were collected by a ship which took us the rest of the way. It was southern hemisphere, and quite cold, but not far enough south to be snowy. The palace itself was covered in climbing vines which had dropped their leaves, so that it looked like it had been tied down with woody ropes.

They didn’t want to risk me being there too long, so I arrived, glanced about, and then First and Fourth joined up to take me down along the main corridor only partially cleared of ancient corpses to look at the ramp.

Kaoren was being particularly upright and silent, with his eyes half-lidded. He loathes the poke Devlin at it method. And it didn’t help that this was one of those times where I wasn’t feeling comfortable at all, having to force myself go through with it.

By the time we reached the ramp my heart-rate was spiking out of sheer scaredy-cat, and I leaned against Kaoren in a not very mission-like attitude as I streamed to them the whispering I could hear. And then over the interface I suggested that most everyone wander a little way away because I could still feel Lira there and I was hoping she would manifest herself.

Everyone except Kaoren, Maze and Tsur Selkie went off around a corner, and Maze and Tsur Selkie stood as far away from me as they were willing to go, and then I said out loud: "I’d really like to talk to you, Lira."

When she appeared, she was kind of tucked against my leg and behind me, as if hiding from having to look directly at the ramp.

"I’ll try not to cry all over the place this time," I said, having to clutch Kaoren rather a bit to stop myself from being visibly upset. "We’re trying to find a way to get further down."

"That’s where you think this room is," Lira said, sounding very subdued. "Can you hear it talking?"

"Yes."

"What are you planning to do if you get down there?"

"Silence it," said Kaoren, his voice quiet and even and firm. "We don’t understand what they did well enough to undo it gracefully. We can only try to pull it apart and hope we don’t destroy everything else along with it. We don’t know what will happen to you, Liranadestar."

I’m glad he was there. I don’t think I could have said that to her. She looked up at him, this terribly grave, measuring stare. Then said: "It’s the words which are making the things you put there fall apart," she said. "The words are eating them."

She vanished, disappearing from underneath my hand – and out of my senses. I felt too sick about it all to even talk, but I watched as they tossed a couple more balls down the ramp, and they now have a log of what I heard, showing that the quality and strength of the whispers changes when you toss something down there.

First stayed at the site, and Fourth was flown back to the platform town with me, and we hopped through Kalasa to Pandora, and we’re all on our way to Tare now – including Siame and Eeli. Seeing Eeli in medical was a shock, but I think perhaps I’m glad I got the chance. Even though I still can’t sense any hint of her inside the body they’re keeping alive, I asked if I could spend some time with her, and told her all about Taarel’s hair, and how I think Inisar likes Taarel, and how much everyone misses her.

After that, I managed to talk Kaoren into getting some sleep – he looks to me like he hasn’t been sleeping since Fourth was sent back to Oriath, and when I need to go to sleep, I want him not to be exhausted. The kids and I sat next to him and played games most of the trip, with me being very reassuringly not ill and not vomiting and not in a coma. They’ve tanked now too, and most of the rest of Fourth, and I’m pretty tired, but I’m holding out till we’re home. Not much longer.

A couple of days on Tare has made my birthday plans for Siame fall apart rather, since I doubt she’ll be returning to Muina with us, and barring dramas we’re due to go back the day before her birthday. I’m trying to decide whether to buy something for her. It’s made it easier to deal with Kaoren and Rye’s presents, though. Kaoren’s is something I’ve been experimenting with for a while – holding a nice stone I picked up and trying to fill it with feelings which he’ll be able to sense with Place. The problem is I can’t tell if it’s worked. At least I can shop for Rye and maybe for Sen as well while I’m here.

Thursday, October 30

Spiritual

After all that fuss, I slept without any dreams at all, let alone being trapped anywhere. Kaoren says that just showed that the tactic of moving me before I was drawn in worked.

Nice quiet day, anyway. I had no medical appointments, no training, and since Fourth Squad has this time as leave, Kaoren and I could spend a lot of time together, and he could spend the morning with Siame. He’s not happy because she’s chosen to go home to their parents (she’s only just reached the point of not being tubed up, and will be a month or so in straight recovery mode). He doesn’t consider it a healthy environment for her, but he’s not arguing and is taking her home tomorrow (a complicated trip because she can’t really sit up for long periods). I am thoroughly relieved that there’s no suggestion I go with them, even though it is a bit weird to not meet or even talk to the parents of the person you’re engaged to. With the interface, Kaoren could arrange that easily, and the fact that he hasn’t does make me wonder what they’ve been saying to him. I have seen pictures of them, and also his brother – they’ve inescapably been drawn in by the publicity surrounding my engagement to Kaoren and were also minorly well-known beforehand, at least in art circles, but haven’t been interested in discussing Kaoren and me with the press at all, beyond Kaoren’s mother giving the Setari program a bit of a serve.

I put in a lot of shopping – noting with some awe the way the amount in my account keeps going up, earning interest and adding in my wages. I also surveyed the current tone of the gossip about me and the kids, not to mention the universe falling apart, the inadequacy of KOTIS, and the Cruzatch spies in our midst.

In the afternoon we were able to take the kids swimming. Zan couldn’t make it, but Ys and Rye are confident enough now that they don’t need a person devoted entirely to them. Still swimming with frantic inefficiency, but no longer with overtones of panic. Ys swims with dogged determination – nothing like being dropped in a lake to demonstrate to her that this is a useful skill – but Rye’s really loving it, and I cheerfully taught him some different dives (notably bomb dives). Sen is still slightly scared by the whole thing, but is happy enough so long as one of us is sticking within arm’s-length.

And she always radiates a deep sense of contentment when we do family activities. I think the older two still don’t fully realise that Sen sought me out not because she wanted parents, but because she wants Ys and Rye to have parents. I don’t feel particularly used, though. Sen does genuinely like me – her Sights may have told her I was useful, but it’s the way Kaoren and I behave which prompts all those joyous little hugs, and she will turn to me for comfort if she’s upset.

Kaoren and I were sitting in my window-seat discussing the kids' development, but I got a little distracted by how beautiful he is and started kissing him, and enjoying very much Kaoren’s usual reaction whenever I try to take charge. We’ve already learned not to go stripping off in unlocked rooms, and were just getting to the stage of deciding we needed to move when we realised we had an audience: Ys and Lira. I had to laugh at them.

"You look like twins," I said, which drew a fierce scowl from both of them.

"No we don’t," Ys said. They don’t, either, other than having typical Lantaren colouring. Lira is very good-looking, a bit similar in structure to Sen or Zee, with long, thick hair. Ys is skinny, almost boyish, and her hair is thin and fine and uncooperative. And Rye keeps reminding me of Nils, but without all the smouldering. [Thankfully!]

"You do when you’re both pulling a face like this," I said, twisting my mouth with scornful disgust, and laughing at them again because they both reacted with the same angry annoyance. "Hello again, Lira," I said, before they thought to storm off. "Is it harder to project all the way to another planet?"

"Is that where this is?" Lira glanced past us to the towering thunderstorm approaching outside. "I suppose it might be. They’re building another trap for you, so maybe it’s good that you’re not there."

"Did you hear what kind of trap?" Kaoren asked. He’d handled the interruption with almost his usual aplomb, but with just a little extra colour in his cheeks – and a cushion in his lap.

"They’re making it hard for me to get near," Lira said, shrugging. "I only heard two of them arguing about how it was a bad idea because it risked speeding something up or making something break, but the other one said that it doesn’t matter if it speeds up because if they have a second touchstone they’ll be able to finish off properly and then they won’t have to worry about it at all again."

"Any idea when their trap will be ready?" I asked, and she shook her head.

"They’re frightened," she said, with some considerable satisfaction. "They need to get you soon. Can you show me what this world looks like?"

She sounded angry when she asked, which was a combination of very justifiable rage at the people who’d kidnapped her, and an attempt to disguise a resurgence of the sheer horror of her half-life, which she seems to be trying not to focus on in preference to revenging herself by foiling the plans of Photoshop Gods.

There was no way I was going to say no to showing Lira anything, and all five of us ended up taking her on tour, since Sen woke up when Ys went to tell Rye, and attached herself to Lira in a pleased and very protective way. And the kids were useful tour-guides, too, since they insisted on pointing out the things which most interested them as residents of a non-technological world. Moving walkways and elevators and the KOTIS ship dock, and the roof with its whitestone expanse and the enormous storm roiling in the distance. The one thing we didn’t see was many people. Kaoren told me that the bluesuits pretended they were having a drill, put KOTIS on alert, and actually cleared corridors rather than have too many people see her, since Lira is very secret still, and stands out incredibly in her formal Lantaren outfit.

Sen was asleep on her feet by the time we reached the roof, and Kaoren carried her back down to our apartment and put her to bed, while I trailed along making sure Rye kept walking in his enthusiasm to describe what travelling in the ships was like (they’re all immensely impressed by the ships). Lira faded away before we’d quite reached the apartment, and I spent quite a while talking to Ys and Rye over the interface, since Rye’s caught up with Ys in understanding just how bad a situation Lira is in, and went all white-faced and horrified when I couldn’t promise him that we’d save her. As soon as I left them they both hopped into Sen’s bed, which is a sign of how deeply upset by this they are.

Kaoren’s been in interface meetings ever since, but is very unkeen on letting me out of his sight. Another trap for me is not a good thing.

Friday, October 31

Little Gestures

Kaoren had Sight dreams about me all night. The same thing over and over – me falling and him trying to catch me but my hands slipping through his. Sight Sight isn’t supposed to be prophetic, so it’s likely a reaction to his awareness that there’s an existing threat. He was a wreck by morning (and I wasn’t that great, because he thrashed about and even kneed me in the stomach once), and when breakfast time rolled around, we came very close to having an argument because Kaoren wanted to arrange for someone else to take Siame home.

We were fortuitously interrupted by the delivery of a huge number of parcels – the results of my shopping spree – which certainly gave the kids some fun over breakfast. I’m trying to restrain the urge to buy them everything, but even things which are practical replacements in my eyes (like the endless amounts of bubble bath Sen gets through) also count as impossible largesse in their eyes.

To my delight, among the parcels was one which had been forwarded care of Maze, and I tore it open to find that Siame’s book gift had been reproduced precisely as ordered, with my laboriously transcribed titles included. This was a serious distraction for Kaoren, who not only was very interested in the contents (and forced himself to not more than glance at it because it was Siame’s gift), but also the fact that I’d managed to get it made without him knowing. I’d simply forgotten about it, which appears to be an excellent way to keep secrets from Sight Sight talents.

One of the things I’d ordered was some useful paper, a thick piece of which I folded and wrote on, and a big sheet I measured out against the (huge) book, then gave to the kids the assignment of drawing pictures to make a birthday card and wrapping paper. Kaoren I took off to the shower, to talk him into going with Siame. I don’t want him not doing something which would normally be so important to him, just because he’s afraid for me. I guess that might count as our first full and proper argument, because we definitely had the make-up sex.

He was pretty subdued afterwards, but quietly joined me in adding drawings to the wrapping and card – really exquisite pictures of some of the animals we’d seen on Muina, which he told me privately his parents would consider embarrassing just because they’d been done on something like wrapping paper. I think I’m going to struggle to like his parents, if I ever meet them.

But the present looked great, all wrapped up in embarrassing art: my little plan to convey to Siame that she’s not lost a brother, but instead gained an extended family. But Siame’s reaction, when we went down to see her off, was focused almost entirely on Kaoren’s drawings. It was hard to tell if she was upset that I’d managed to break Kaoren’s ban on drawing, or pleased that he’d drawn something for her. She was on her best behaviour otherwise, self-assured and very polite – despite being tremendously weak and shaky still. No wonder she’s feeling down – being sick always makes you feel awful. Her birthday’s the day after tomorrow, and I can only hope that the book wasn’t just the thing to make her more annoyed with me.

Today was a rough day. Even though my move to Tare had been kept very quiet, and I was thoroughly guarded, being away from me for the seven hours it took to fly Siame to Unara, settle her in, and then fly back was not something Kaoren found easy to face – especially when it involved Siame being so ill, and having to talk to his parents. He ended up asking me to keep him permanently in-channel again, streaming what was around me to him, which I did (except for going to the bathroom) and of course nothing dramatic happened at all, but it helped.

Lira’s warning has meant a higher level of alert on all three worlds. I was assigned to Twelfth for the day, and Zan simply incorporated me and the kids into their training regime, while ensuring I was thoroughly guarded at all times. She managed to make it seem almost natural that there were always at least two squad members within five feet of me. But the stress level among all the squads is high, and so many of the Setari look exhausted or are sporting injuries. We had the good news that all the malachite marble locations have been discovered, but the technicians at Oriath have made little progress with the ramp of crushing doom. They’re experimenting with sonics as a way to keep the words out, but so far have only made it an extra foot or so down the ramp before the poor drone goes squish.

November Again

Saturday, November 1

Keyed Up

Another bad night for Kaoren. Beyond remaining notably unkidnapped, I don’t know what I can do for him. It must be awful to have something like Sight Sight shouting at you that the person you love is in danger. Other than keeping tensely alert and taking all logical precautions, you can only wait and try and stop it when it happens. I’m less keyed up about it myself, but in a kind of determined way, because if I let myself think too much about it I’m going to have a few rip-roaring nightmares of my own.

Just picture me with my eyes shut, hands over my ears, going "La la la la la la".

Not exactly heroic, I know. But KOTIS has achieved what it needed from me, found what they think is a workable plan, and my role now is to just keep my head down until they open the way to the last of the marbles.

The rest of Fourth was back from leave today, and I could see that Kaoren’s open exhaustion was a serious shock to them. Sen, oddly, isn’t having nightmares, but I think her Sight has told her something because she’s gone very quiet and wants to be carried about and held far more than usual. I’m not allowed anywhere without a guard, and a full squad within quick response time. Not even medical. Mori and Glade were with me today, and it was a relief to talk almost normally about the ads for the upcoming season of The Hidden War. They’re hyping the hell out of the first episode as a major, history-making event, and showing the last few seconds of the last episode and then blackness and then a fragment of the actual audio from my log, ending in a huge splash and underwatery sounds.

I think if any of us have to wait any longer someone’s head’s going to explode from sheer stress.

Monday, November 3

Out from Underneath

It’s over.

It’s over and I’m not dead. Or trapped in a half-life or any of the things I halfway expected to happen to me. I’ve been quietly convinced for so long that I would end up dead that I can hardly believe it. Nor can anyone else, I think.

There’s a good deal of cautious celebration going on.

Of course, I had to get through a lot of drama to reach this point. It started while I was still being a pin cushion in medical, when news came in from Muina that Second Squad had been lost.

Not lost as in dead: lost as in vanished. They’d been in-transit through Kalasa, hauling a fresh batch of sacrificial drones (now produced in Pandora). They stepped on the platform to the town nearest to Oriath – along with a greensuit and two greysuits who had been with them – and didn’t arrive at the expected destination. As totally gone as I’d been when I vanished to Kalasa. All the scanners stationed by the platform could tell us was that there’d been a higher than usual power reading. The greysuits were guessing that the platform’s destination had been diverted. That Second Squad had been caught by the trap meant for me.

There’s a serious problem with using technology that your enemy understands far better than you.

They’d been missing about an hour by the time we heard the news, and we had to sit through way too much debate over whether to try and use me to visualise the missing. I desperately wanted to, not only because I’ve grown close to Second, but I just hated to think of Zee and Ketzaren, who would both be going out of their minds. But I was also scared spitless that I would visualise them and they’d be dead.

Before KOTIS was willing to risk a visualisation – particularly one which would require me going into the Ena – they sent every available squad out to scout multiple locations in near-space for any sign of Cruzatch, and then finally took me through a gate they don’t normally use, with an escort of six squads.

The visualisation at least wasn’t difficult to do and I felt a good deal of relief not to be seeing dead bodies. Nils was looking very captainly, quite unlike his usual self, talking to Jeh while unpacking one of the drones from a pallet of them. Jeh was trying to wake everyone else, all lying about on the floor of a rather familiar-looking doughnut-shaped room. The inside of one of the Pillars.

"The walls–" Halla began, and Kaoren said sharply: "Cut the projection!" and grabbed at me, but it was too late, and his hands went straight through me.

It’s a little hard to describe what happened, even after watching several different logs of it. I guess it was the reverse of what I did when visualisating Inisar. I was sitting on the testing chair we’d brought with us, looking at all the symbols burnt into the whitestone walls of the Pillar, which had shifted from glowing mildly to vivid white, and from my point of view just sort of overwhelmed everything I could see and swept me away like a tidal force. I really thought I was in the undertow of a massive wave. The squads guarding me saw me just fade away, as if I was one of my own projections allowed to lapse. And to Nils and Jeh, off in the Pillar, the symbols began glowing and I suddenly blazed into existence, being pulled backward toward the central column of the Pillar.

Nils has Speed and excellent reflexes, and threw himself between me and the central column, which was a handy way to give us both a lot of bruises. I split his lip. The tidal wave kept trying to sweep me on, and he let out this low gasp of pain as he was crushed against the central column, but he managed to keep hold of me.

I felt like a super magnet was pulling me, and Nils was just a bit of squishiness temporarily between me and where I was going. The pressure made it very hard to breathe and Nils was even worse off, with me crushing into his chest, and his enhanced Telekinesis useless because it won’t work on me. Even with Jeh’s help they couldn’t budge me at all, and my arms and legs kept getting sucked backwards around him and going straight through the substance of the central column into the aether stream. All three of us barely had the strength to haul them back, and it was obvious that if Nils didn’t let me keep going both of us would suffocate.

"Get one – two – of the small drones," Nils gasped, then opened a channel for all three of us because he was barely able to talk. "Caszandra, open your suit and seal the drones inside it."

This wasn’t difficult to do, though it did make me look ridiculously like I was pregnant with very argumentative twins, and spider drones aren’t exactly something that are fun to put inside your clothes. Fortunately the legs folded away in non-dangerous ways or I probably would have ended up a drone-kebab.

Nils activated the drones, adding: "Sound your alert – it gives more people more ability to access your interface and suit controls," and gave me a little squeeze after I did, then with Jeh’s help struggled out from between me and the symbol-covered central column. I promptly smacked into it and vanished, falling into a river of light.

I’ve watched the mission log from back on Tare, where I and my projection had both vanished at the same time. Kaoren stays frozen before my empty chair for all of two seconds, eyes wide and horrified, and then goes totally captain, ordering everyone back inside at double-pace and asking Halla for her Sight impressions during the brief trip back inside. His voice was maybe a little more curt than usual, and his eyes nearly totally closed, but otherwise he didn’t show any sign of his feelings. He says he couldn’t let himself pause until he’d made sure everything he could think of doing was being done.

Once back in real-space he was very absolute in his discussions with the bluesuits – though at that time he thought that I was trapped at the Pillar with Second, and didn’t know I’d spent barely any time there at all. But knowing Second was at a Pillar, and with drones, meant they had a shot at finding them, since all the Pillar locations found so far open out into deep-space. Kaoren had a scanning ship which was stationed at the rift island sent into deep-space immediately to try and contact the drones, and then arranged for a second ship to take a mix of scanning technicians and some of the best Kalrani path-finders on a trip through to Muina. And the kids, because Lira has shown a marked tendency to speak to them, and the search would be coordinated from Muina.

I can only be relieved that he did that – and that the weather was good so that they could fly quickly and weren’t still in deep-space when it happened. Fourth and Eleventh travelled to the rift island via the Ena – a route which has been included in the regular rotations ever since I got myself trapped the first time – and they joined up with the scanning ship as it came back from its initial survey.

There had already been a project underway to try and locate the Pillars from deep-space. They hadn’t succeeded as yet, but then they hadn’t had drones and squad sitting handily at any Pillar locations. Deep-space isn’t a great environment for drones – the physics there aren’t exactly helpful – but drones and ship instruments have a far greater range than the Setari. The scanning ship hadn’t detected anything when it went in to hover around the rift entrance, but after returning to collect Fourth and Eleventh, they headed on the usual course to Muina, scanning madly all the way, and finally detected a signal just before the Muina rift. Whereupon Nils told them that I was no longer with them.

Since they were inside the Pillar and relatively protected from Ionoth, Second Squad (bruises and aether-drunkenness aside) weren’t in immediate danger, so the ship continued on to Muina to let them know I’d been taken, only to find out that this was old news.

From the squads on Muina’s point of view, they’d been continuing their search for Second Squad when I suddenly popped into interface range, deeply unconscious with my alert blaring away. Nils had dropped both our logs to the drones before letting me go, so they knew what had happened to me before I’d passed out. And they knew exactly where I was, too – right near the bottom of the Oriath installation.

As soon as the Oriath team detected me, they’d accessed the drones, and withdrawn my nanosuit so that they could make a visual scan. The visual had shown that I was lying alone on a (symbol-etched) platform being busily unconscious. The technician driving the drones detected movement nearby and very sensibly didn’t leave them sitting on top of me, but scuttled them down one side of the platform and tucked them as far out of sight as she could manage. She even powered them down to a ready state, and I gather that she’s likely to get some kind of commendation for this, since the Cruzatch invariably destroy any drones they spot, and it was a group of Cruzatch which came and took me away – up to a room directly below the room holding Lira.

After a suitable pause, KOTIS repowered the drones and did some cautious exploration of the lower reaches of the Oriath installation. The Cruzatch had taken me up, and one drone tried to follow and was promptly crushed on a ramp. The other searched down and found a particularly grand and magnificent series of sarcophagus rooms, ending in another malachite marble. Once it reached here, the drone was tucked into a corner and KOTIS Command had a fun argument over whether to have Palanty from Fifth teleport down straight away, or to wait. They didn’t want to precipitate a countermeasure by the Cruzatch, and if they lost the drone’s visual feed, it would be much more difficult and dangerous for Palanty to teleport down.

And they didn’t particularly want to blow the place up while I was still in it. Unless they had to.

The eventual decision was to hold off doing anything until they’d broken through to the malachite marble in the last of the other installations. Isten Notra had stressed that leaving everyone one marble functional might create catastrophic stress on the spaces, so KOTIS has been shielding each marble against Cruzatch retaliation and planting bombs ready and waiting.

And they were still waiting when Fourth brought news of Second’s location. Fourth stayed on Muina, headed for Oriath, while Eleventh went back to trace a path to the Pillar where Second were stuck. KOTIS was already well into full battle mode, most of the Setari squads massing at Oriath, and two groups of technicians frantically trying to overcome the ramp of doom and work through the last of the shielding at a final installation up near the northern icecap.

All that time they were trying to wake me up, but I was suffering from an extreme overload of aether and was totally non-responsive. Other than them finally breaking into the other installation and planting the second-last of the bombs, there really wasn’t any progress until I did wake up – by which time Fourth was about two-thirds of the way to Oriath and Second had been recovered and had just emerged from the rift.

Waking up was the worst thing.

I was lying down and I couldn’t move and I couldn’t see. There were voices. The whispers.

The whispers were still whispers, but somehow they were so loud, so dominant, that the large mass of people trying to talk to me over the interface were just noise. But then that noise dropped away and became Kaoren, just Kaoren, talking to me steadily, and very sensibly sending the words to me in text as well.

Reading his words helped me hear him, repeating my name. And then, in some of the bare few words of English I’d managed to teach him: "Please. Need. Hear."

That did start to shift me out of my groggy state, and I tried to turn my head and failed, discovering that the stuff covering me would only expand and contract a few millimetres, like strong elastic.

The whispers started to build up, trying to drown out Kaoren, and that made me angry, giving me impetus to respond.

"There’s ten Cruzatch near me, and more somewhere down. I’m tied up and can’t move my arms or legs. I think they’ve used the same stuff that net was made of," I said, struggling with the annoying rubberiness of it. "There’s something over me making it too dark to see. I can hear the stones whispering. They’re a little further away, but otherwise it’s very like my dream."

Although I held it together starting out, I sound openly terrified by the time I reached the end. And the log has helpfully captured my gasping breaths when Tsur Selkie told me they needed me to wait, to lie there and tell them if the Cruzatch went away.

I opened a private channel to Kaoren and asked him to keep talking, and especially to keep sending it in text to reinforce the words, to tell me what had been happening. I needed that to keep back the whispers, which kept sucking at my attention, this steady stream of old Muinan, building a hierarchy of gods.

It might have seemed like forever, but apparently it wasn’t more than five minutes after I woke up enough to respond that until the Cruzatch in the room gathered together, then moved away.

"They are going down," I said. "None left near me."

"Tell us immediately when you can no longer detect them," Kaoren said, his voice shifting to measured captain-mode. "As soon as that happens, the drone will be activated so a team can teleport into the room of the power stone. We can’t teleport to where you are, both because we cannot see the room, and because you’re in the heavy zone. Once you’re free, you need to move either down toward the power stone or up to the surface – whichever way is easiest. Once the teleportation group are in, I’m going to take you through a visualisation to help free you."

"I can only feel a couple now," I said. "I – no, they’re gone as well."

"Good. We’ll start the visualisation now."

Kaoren began to describe a drone, a very solid, squat drone furnished with a vast array of cutting tools. It was his usual clear, concise description, and by that time I’d shrugged off more of the aether effect, but–

"The whispering’s getting louder." My voice was high.

"Then concentrate, Cassandra." Kaoren’s words were clipped, stern, the tone he only uses with me in emergencies.

He continued with the visualisation, and I think I did succeed in making the drone, or at least there was suddenly a loud crunching sound right next to me, as if a solid, squat drone with a vast array of cutting tools was being compacted for recycling.

Then Zee’s voice, loud and abrupt. "Use her suit. Caszandra, we’re going to cut you out."

Nanosuits can be cloth, they can change colours, and they can make an edge sharper than steel. Lots of them, all over. Caszandra Scissorsuit.

It worked too. While Palanty and Kajal teleported down to the malachite marble room with the last of the bombs and a round dozen drones to send skittering off exploring, my uniform grew dozens of blades, effortlessly slicing through the stuff holding me down. My hands came loose first as a technician cleverly manipulated the suit to slice as well as pierce.

But the whispers had me.

As I stopped hearing anything else, my vitals began climbing through the roof, and waves of distortion started rippling out: slow billows of heat which increased with every repetition. Not confined to the room either – they felt them at Pandora. For all I know, they felt them on Tare.

Tsur Selkie ordered Palanty and Kajal out immediately, and recommended that the bombs be triggered as soon as they were clear. All they could do was hope that the malachite marble would be destroyed without much damage to my floor. Palanty and Kajal teleported, but then the next wave of heat and distortion rolled out and that one–

Quite a few people have tried to describe to me what happened next. Maze says he felt thin, Zee that she was made of glass. Everyone on Muina had some variation of this: flattened, washed away, erased, frozen, unable to move, to think, to do. To trigger explosions. Kaoren says he felt painted. And all of them could see another place, a Muina where enormous statues stood above the cities to proclaim the reign of golden gods.

I didn’t feel thin, or made of glass. I felt like I was being cooked alive while my brain was pierced by a half dozen needles. My scissorsuit hadn’t cleared away the covering over my face, but even through it I could see there was a bright, burning light directly above me.

There was just enough of me left outside the brain piercing to be aware that they were going to blow the malachite marbles. I didn’t realise the entire world had fallen into a pit of distortion with no way to dig itself out, and so I was pretty much lying there waiting to die. Which was pathetic of me, but it had just felt so inevitable for so long. I was the Supa Speshul Magick Gurl who had appeared from nowhere and made it possible to win, but who had to die at the end so that the people she cared about could live on.

Which would SUCK.

Especially when I was the one doing the dying, and particularly when it involved being slowly roasted. If I was going to be blown up, I decided, I at least wanted to get away from the mega-sunlamp first.

I wanted to not break my promise to Kaoren. I wanted to not have been wrong to let three children care.

My body didn’t feel quite my own, but I managed to lift a hand and flail clumsily at my face, swiping away the rubbery shroud. But the whispers were getting louder, louder, and I’m not sure if I would have managed any more if not for Lira.

I don’t know how long she’d been there, trying to push me off the altar. She was quite a sight to see, looking like a proper ghost instead of a little girl, with great streamers of light warping off her, being pulled toward this glowing starburst above where I was lying. Every time she reached out, her arms would thin out to light and be caught by the starburst, making it impossible for her to reach me.

But she kept trying, and mouthed words I could barely hear: "You have to move!"

The sight of her galvanised all the parts of me which weren’t caught by whispers. Not to any rational, measured plan of action. No, my response could best be summed up as BAD LIGHT EATING LIRA! The amount of thought space I had left was definitely at Lolcat level. Which is probably why I decided that the important thing was to save the little girl who’d been dead for centuries.

But it got me to move, to roll off the altar, trying to push her backward, looking for the quickest route away from the light. There was no door. That betrayal of expectation actually cleared my head a little, enough to realise that the burning sensation in my chest was at least in part because the air was really, really hot. Still focused on saving Lira, I grabbed her to me, and staggered drunkenly toward the corner of the room, trying to shield her from the light.

As soon as I moved from the altar, the ground began to shake, and heading to the corner increased the amount of earth-shaking to a spectacular degree. And it felt like the needles in my brain were being dragged out, with every treacle-pull step.

Then the floor heaved up, but at least it tossed us toward the corner, whereupon I shoved Lira underneath me and tried to cover her as much as possible, desperately trying to project a shield or wall to keep away the light.

The sky fell.

The earth-shaking was worldwide. The damage at Pandora wasn’t too bad – there’s a crack in one of the science buildings and one of the towers in the old town fell down. More spectacular was the split which appeared in the moon. Instead of a bullet-hole, it now looks like a comma. That happened just before all the painted glass people found themselves real again, and immediately blew the charges.

The destruction of the malachite marbles caused a great surge of power to be released through the platforms. They aren’t working any more, though Isten Notra thinks that’s because their aether supply was exhausted. Moonfall happened at the platform villages where the moon was visible yesterday, anyway. And the Ena is currently a no-go area, all heaving and disturbed, so we’re cut off from Tare and Kolar. They think it will settle down, but not necessarily to the way it was before, and it’s very likely the Pillars are no longer operating.

But all that was later. They blew the charges just after I started causing earthquakes, and a world was thrown from its feet. When the dust settled I was alive but unconscious, my vitals not critical, but not likely to improve with a palace and four levels of subterranean installation collapsed spectacularly on top of me. It took nearly two kasse for them to get me out.

I woke in my home-away-from-home less than a day after my visualisation of Second Squad. Kaoren was asleep in the chair beside me, but came awake with a start which meant he’d had an alarm set to trigger if my state shifted to consciousness. I tried to say hello, but after all that burning hot air, my throat is pretty painful, so I said "I can’t believe I’m not dead," over the interface.

He made a face at me, and then just leaned forward and rested his forehead against my shoulder. I put my hand on the back of his head and we stayed like that without speaking, appreciating that we could, that we got to be alive together, and go on.

My cheek and forehead felt more than odd, so eventually I tried to touch them, but Kaoren caught my hand, then showed me what I currently looked like, with my left eye swollen shut and the skin around it red and angry beneath a coating of salve, the eyebrow gone along with most of my hair, which had been melted and frizzled and then chopped unevenly off by the medics. I also have a broken arm and cracked ribs, but altogether this has been one of my less serious forays into injury-land. I’m planning on it being my last.

"The kids okay?" I asked, and he nodded, and told me he’d fetch them and squeezed my hand painfully hard, then left me to the embarrassing things medics do to me.

Sen arrived first, running ahead enthusiastically, but stopping just short of leaping on me and instead climbing very cautiously into the bed with me. She didn’t say anything at all, just welded herself to my side and stuck there no matter what anyone said to her. It wasn’t too bad – she’d chosen the side without the broken arm – and I patted her on the head, feeling quite overwhelmed. Rye had followed along hastily behind, but stopped short and just stared at me.

I gestured for him to come closer, and tugged at one of his thick, wavy locks, then brought all three of them into the channel with Kaoren and me and said: "We have to get Kaoren give both of us a haircut, I think."

Ys came in then, and completely floored me. Because Lira was with her. Lira. Dressed in Ys' clothes, with some bruises of her own, glowering at me in an unusually subdued way.

"But how?" I asked, holding out a hand for her in complete disbelief. I hadn’t been wanting to think about what the destruction of the installation had meant for Lira, and certainly hadn’t expected to find her with Ys.

"We’re not certain," Kaoren said, helping me sit up so I could hug Lira. "She was beneath you when we reached you."

"How wonderful," I managed to say aloud, my throat sounding like it had been sandpapered. "I’m so glad."

"There’s no reason she can’t use Siame’s room," Ys said – a pronouncement rather than a question, and I had to laugh, which hurt a lot. Ys is so protective of her family. I’m so glad she’s decided to expand it to Lira.

"I think we can manage a room of her very own," I said, with some effort, and when Kaoren had given me a drink to make it easier, added to him: "If Cruzatch are gone, was hoping they let us build house on that island where we go swimming."

"I was thinking the same thing," Kaoren said, looking pleased. "When you’re a little better we can all work on the design together."

I fell asleep before I really got to see more than their initial reaction to that. Rye was the only one looking openly delighted, but I think they were all pleased, and Kaoren told them that they had to make sure they had a good idea of what they needed for their rooms. I’ve had a chance to talk to them all individually since, and every single one of them has obviously put considerable thought into the kind of room they would like, for all that it’s quite hard to drag the details out of some of them.

So Kaoren and I have four children now, though Isten Notra has told me quite bluntly that there’s a strong possibility that Lira will one day simply fade away, just as my origami cranes apparently have begun to. Isten Notra isn’t sure if she will age, or remain as she is now, and if she counts as an Ionoth or not. She’s something very new and unexpected, and there’s a huge amount of scientific and public interest in her, which we’re going to have to shield her from. Kaoren vetoed an awful lot of the tests the greysuits wanted to run on her, and fortunately Isten Notra is backing him up. Lira, in turn, is claiming to no longer be able to visualise or project, which we’re not altogether sure is true. She certainly enhances the Setari when they touch her (and without the distortion I cause). They’re holding off implanting the interface for the moment, given its tendency to try and kill me, but I’m going to argue against keeping her permanently unconnected since I can see she already has realised the lack. She and Ys are thick as thieves, which I find a very handy thing.

After a long second sleep I’ve been awake for most of today (well, with occasional naps). Sen has stayed stubbornly by my side, sneaking back if anyone tries to remove her, and seems to have appointed herself as my social secretary, happily bullying everyone who comes and visits me. The only times she’s left of her own accord is when I’ve spoken to Ys and to Lira, and the rest of them time she gives my visitors their marching orders when she thinks they’ve stayed too long. Unfortunately I can’t convince anyone that I’m well enough to not need to be in medical, despite not being that injured and in no apparent further danger.

It really is over.

It’s been very interesting seeing First and Second Squad particularly. There’s just something different about their eyes. Relief, of course, that we escaped any more deaths (on Muina, anyway), but also this introspective quality. They’re all thinking rather seriously about a different sort of future. The tears between real-space and the Ena haven’t miraculously vanished, and Isten Notra says we won’t know if destroying the malachite marbles has had a positive effect until the initial disruption has died down, but she does think that removing the pressure of the parasite world can only be a good thing.

What exactly happened to the Cruzatch and the parasite world is anyone’s guess. It might all still be there, but it’s far more likely to have been destroyed or to now be fading away. Just desserts for the Photoshop Gods, but I don’t think I’ll ever forget those children. Calling their world a parasite makes it easier, but it doesn’t make their lives any less gone. I can only choose to count what’s been saved, rather than who was lost.

I’m still having trouble believing I’m not dead.

Tuesday, November 4

Out of Touch

Slept a lot today, in between various medical things being done to me. Then Alay and Ketzaren came and kidnapped me in the afternoon and gave me a proper haircut. It’s now shorter than Kaoren’s but at least even. Still, I was able to emerge from medical to have dinner and watch the sunset and enjoy sitting around in the common room and on the patio with the mass of Setari now filling the building, watching their faces, listening to the changed note in their voices.

The squads – everyone on the planet – are currently gathered in Pandora, not even a hardy few trying to sift through the rubble at Oriath. For safety reasons, KOTIS is keeping everyone in one place until the rift stops letting out strange power surges, and so we’ve all these squads with only a little guarding duty between them. They’ve mostly been given a break to recover from the past hectic weeks and their various injuries, and are otherwise helping with colony work. They’re not even allowed in near-space.

This means accommodating First, Second, Fourth, Fifth (who are being low-key, at least), Sixth, Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh, Fifteenth, Sixteenth, Squad One and Squad Two. Plus the Nuran Setari. Everyone’s doubled up, and they’ve started a second (or third, given the school) building on the south side. It will be more exposed, since there’s less hill there.

There are far more squads on Muina than on Tare and I know Maze is concerned about what this will mean to the squads defending Tare. Especially since so many of those on Tare are there because of injuries. Though it seems from the cautious drone surveys they’ve done of near-space here that the unstable environment might discourage most Ionoth anyway.

The prospect of the separation from Tare and Kolar being a long, extended one is naturally upsetting for many Pandorans, since it represents a complete loss of contact with friends and family. It’s mainly Zan I’ll miss, and Ghost, who we think maybe is on Tare. I can only be thankful that Kaoren insisted on moving the kids here, since Zan would have been practically the only person on Tare they’ve spent any time with at all.

The dinner discussion remained firmly on rebuilding Muina, and the progress of the colonies, at least partly because it was Lira’s first large group outing and I’m willing to bet that everyone’s under strict orders not to upset her. I spoke to Isten Notra today about the way everyone is itching to pick Lira’s brain about all things Lantaren, and fortunately they’re willing to hold off until Isten Notra gives them the go-ahead, and she doesn’t plan to do that for weeks or months, and even then only sparingly. She says they can just live with whatever Lira chooses to volunteer until then.

And I am very extremely happy to no longer be so important – not even the only touchstone! I’m still not allowed out without a guard, at least until they’re absolutely certain the Cruzatch won’t reappear, and there’ll be laws about my visualisation and projection abilities regardless, but it’s the beginning of a new phase, and I can look forward to just focusing on looking after the kids and being with Kaoren and escaping the cycle of injuries which seems to be the inevitable consequence of playing hero.

And maybe occasionally making dragons. Because!

Kaoren’s asleep in the chair next to my bed again. I haven’t had enough chance to be alone with him. He needs to be able to hold me, I think, and know properly that I’m still with him.

Wednesday, November 5

Looking Ahead

Considerably better today, and cleared to not have to live in medical, so I immediately went for a walk down to the lake’s edge all by myself and sat on a rock feeling very daring. I’m a sad case. It was quite five minutes before anyone noticed (for all I was in full view of the common room) and I sat there sunning myself and looking forward to the days when no-one is assigned to guard me.

Par and Glade were my current watchdogs, and Glade came out very aggrieved and said: "You have no idea the tortures we’ll be subjected to. If you’re going to sneak off, make sure it’s when someone from First is assigned to you."

I grinned at him (as much as my very sore face would allow anyway). "I won’t tell Kaoren if you don’t."

"He’ll know. He always does." Glade gave me an equivocal look. "I think for the moment it’s just easier on all of us to know exactly where you are, and to be sure you’ve someone with you."

He meant that Kaoren has been stressed beyond the point of endurance, and I wrinkled my nose, but nodded. "I know. But I give fair warning that I’m going to be a lot less biddable and obedient about staying where I’m put in future. Just walking out here is the first time I’ve gone anywhere by myself in months. Once we’re sure that the Cruzatch aren’t able to get here anymore, I hope to go back to not having people assigned to guard me at all."

"I’m glad it’s not me you have to win that argument with." He glanced toward Pandora’s heart, probably thinking about Tsur Selkie, who had summoned all the captains for a meeting with Muina’s leaders to talk about colony-building. "Not that the rules haven’t changed in a big way. But Cruzatch aren’t the only thing we’re protecting you from, and given all that you’ve done and could do, I don’t see any end to your guard roster."

"Maybe they’ll guard me secretly, like the Nurans do those at Nurenor," I said, and saw from Glade’s lack of reaction that he thought it very likely, if I kicked up too much of a fuss about people following me around.

That kind of put a damper on my day, but I’m still too pleased and amazed to be alive to get too upset about it. Instead I went up to the seats on the very top of the Setari building – the tree is very leafy and shady up there now and it was a warm day – only to find Nils asleep in the grass, surrounded by little daisies. There’s a bruise on one side of his mouth from impacting with the back of my head and his split lip has only started healing, but somehow this made him look smexier than usual.

I’m pretty sure he woke up straight away, but pretended not to, and I decided to act like I thought he was still asleep. Nils' quick thinking with the drones basically saved the planet, but I’m still uncomfortable with him – mainly because I’m bursting to tell him that he’s being very unkind to Zee, or tell Zee just how hurt Nils is – and I don’t think either of them would forgive me for raising the subject.

After finding a position on the bench that didn’t pinch my ribs, I opened a channel to Mara (who had the kids for the morning and was teaching them more basic combat moves) and asked if I could borrow Ys for a while. Ys duly came up, her expression particularly fierce. It made my heart turn over, because I knew it meant she was feeling uncertain. I’d never summoned any of them before. Glade and Par had retired a little down slope, and Nils continued pretending to be asleep as I pointed to the seat opposite.

"You’re supposed to be in medical," Ys said. She much prefers attack to defence.

"I escaped while they were looking the other way," I said cheerfully. "I have a particular job for you. I found this program which we can use to help try and work out what our house will be like. It’s a bit fiddly and annoying, and I keep getting a headache trying to use it. See if you have better luck, and if you think you can work it properly, we’ll have a family meeting and start figuring out what we’d like to have where. Let me know if it’s too hard for you, and I’ll ask Kaoren instead."

Nils lifted his head and gave me an amused look, but Ys was properly insulted by the suggestion that anything might fall in the too hard basket for her, and promptly lost herself in my thinly disguised present for her.

"You’re building a house?" Nils asked, propping himself on one hand.

"We want to try get permission to build on one of the islands. Barracks living some good points, but this give us more privacy, and I can have garden to neglect, and we won’t have to be escorted about as much for fear of passers-by." I shrugged. "It’s just more what I’m used to."

"And given your capacity to acquire children, the barracks won’t be large enough," he added over the interface. "Are you planning on many more?"

"Not for a while. Four’s more than I was thinking of, already. We won’t worry about that until after we’re married anyway."

My face had gone hot, and Nils laughed at me. "So easy," he said aloud, making Ys give him a deeply suspicious look. Fortunately Lohn showed up, and told us about a ceremony of thanksgiving that the provisional council had decided they wanted, to celebrate the colony’s survival, and to honour the Setari for their work in fighting the Cruzatch.

That news was a sign that the captains had been released from the meeting, and Kaoren and Grif dropped down a couple of minutes later. Kaoren just rested against me silently, without saying anything at all. He’s finding it incredibly difficult to be away from me at the moment, so I’m glad I’ve been cleared to sleep in our quarters. Mara arrived with the rest of the kids, so I had Sen for my other side, and smiled to see that Sen and Lira are both wearing their hair in two beribboned braids and are looking disconcertingly like sisters. Ys seems to have donated all her girlier clothes to Lira.

Lira is very upright and distant with most everyone, and is being very formally polite to me, as if she’s a guest with relative strangers, but she immediately sat down beside Ys and the pair of them kept whispering comments to each other.

When Maze arrived he gave me one of his super smiles while he brought all the Setari – Taren, Kolaren and Nuran – into a single channel. He spoke aloud, though, specifically so Lira could hear what was going on, I think.

"The drone which managed to return from the rift shows that while the power flares are dying back, the landscape there is continuing to shift," he said. "It is likely that the Pillars have either been destroyed, or have shut down. This does not mean it’s impossible to reach Tare and Kolar, but that an extremely time-consuming process will need to be undertaken to map the currents of deep-space. The route is not necessarily closed, or even altered, but it will be a matter of delicate timing to navigate. Once we establish the timing, there is likely to only be a narrow window for travel, so multiple daily journeys will be a thing of the past unless we can re-establish the Pillars. That’s a matter for the long-term future."

He shifted, looking thoughtful. "In any case, it’s highly unlikely we will re-establish contact in the next year – Taren year – so these will be the arrangements until such time as that occurs. Most significantly, for day-to-day assignments the squads will be broken apart. Although we will nominally keep our squad designations, current squad make-up is designed for Ena work, and that will be the minority of our duties.

"They believe the platform system is recovering, so bringing Mesiath up to a self-supporting level is to be our first task. The bulk of our work will be assisting in settlement – land clearance, seeding and feeding whitestone, survey and collection work, but also work on the recovery of information at Kalasa and the Oriath site. Expect to be working in groups of two to four. There will be opportunities to apply for extended leave, should you wish it. The provisional council has also established a land grant for all serving Setari, in recognition of the role we have played in making settlement possible. The grant is very generous, and I’ll post details of the process as soon as it’s finalised."

After shooting me an amused glance in exchange for my pleased smile, he went on more seriously: "Construction work is not what we spent so many years training for, and I know that many of you will prefer using your talents more fully. We have a little leeway with the assignments, and we will require more traditional rotation work at Kalasa and the Oriath site, and once it’s deemed safe, with escorting the survey ship attempting to remap the path to Tare and Kolar. Feel free to message me with any preferences, or other concerns. This is a new phase for the Setari program, but it is something we have achieved, and should be proud of. There is a ceremony of thanksgiving scheduled in two days, and then our new assignments will begin."

We ending up having a big picnic lunch on the top of the building – all the squads, even most of Fifth and the Nurans – and everyone talked about parts of Muina they’d seen and liked, and the prospect of owning land or building houses there. The estimate of it being months before there’s any real likelihood for re-establishing contact with the other worlds was actually reasonably comforting to most people, because they’d been worried about it being permanent.

Sen had a wonderful time, as usual, and Rye is blossoming more in social events. Ys and Lira stuck together as if glued, and were very polite to everyone who said anything to them, but I also had a stern message from Ys that I had to arrange for Lira to have the interface installed Straight Away because it wasn’t fair on her.

It was a really nice time until someone noticed that the "Setari party" was being featured on the news and that we were being live-streamed via long-range lenses (and quite a few members of the talent school had taken up nearby vantage points and were watching in fascination). Nils said that islands sounded like a good idea to him too, and we all went inside.

It was the first time any images of me post-squishing had leaked, and there was plenty of discussion about how terrible I looked. It was also the first time Lira had been publicly seen, and I have my doubts about how she’ll take all this discussion about how beautiful and mysterious she is. Fortunately, what little information KOTIS has released about her has made absolutely clear that she spied on the Cruzatch for us, and saved my life, and deserves a lot of credit for any of us still being here.

Obedient to Ys' edict, I checked with Isten Notra, then took Lira down to medical and described to her how completely horrible she was going to feel over the next few days while the technicians gave her a medical exam and then a shot to the temple. It’s unlikely they’ll ever expand the interface for her as they did with me, though they do have a theory about why mine keeps going strange – the language injection they gave me, to jump-start me in learning Taren, is basically a pared-back impression of someone else’s mind, and they think that’s what’s creating the conflict. Since Lira doesn’t need the language injection, they’re more confident about giving her the interface.

Ista Tremmar wanted to keep Lira in medical for observation, which she was extremely unkeen about, and eventually I talked them into putting a medical sense-chair up in our apartment so they’d know if she was having a crisis overnight. I want to keep her close because, even though there’s times when she seems like she is taking naturally to her strange rebirth, I often catch her with a lost and lonely expression. She’s not only survived a great deal of trauma, but I think she’s well aware of the fading away possibility.

I’m never going to forget the sound of her crying, and the way her whole body shuddered while I held her. I’d like to think that I’ve done more than give her a new form of half-life, that she’ll be able to live normally, but since I have no way of knowing, all I can do is offer her as much welcome as she’ll accept.

My throat was pretty worn by the time it was dinnertime, and both Lira and I were feeling very off, so we had a quiet meal, and Kaoren read the evening’s bedtime story. We dimmed the lights in our lounge and put Lira’s medical bed there, instead of in the kids' lounge, where it had been originally. I fell asleep before everyone but Sen, and woke a few hours later with an extreme need to take my pain meds.

Kaoren still can barely talk to me about how he felt while I was trapped. He’s been holding me and watching me write for this entire entry, and I think he’s going to be like that for quite some time. He’s worried now about having a nightmare and hurting me thrashing about, but I told him to just sleep on my unbroken side and we should be fine.

Thursday, November 6

Arcadian

Lira had very little sleep last night, and looked fantastically depressed all day. She spent more of her time in Siame’s room with the lights off. Sen, when she wasn’t making a huge mess in the lounge, was tremendously sweet, running down to the kitchens every couple of hours and getting ice which she would wrap in a towel and then sneak into Lira’s room and silently give it to her and take away the old towel.

I still made her clean up the mess.

Kaoren and I stayed in all day, rarely out of sight of each other, and along with spending time with the kids, managed to talk about not being dead, and what we would be doing next, and whether to change the timing of our wedding, and how to not have to keep relying on other people to take care of our children for us (this mainly involves me not being injured all the time so he and I can better balance the time we spend with them). They’ll be going back to talent school quite soon, but we want Lira especially to have more time to adjust and no longer feel so uncertain about me.

We’re not going to bring our wedding forward, even though the provisional laws they’ve written up for Muina don’t have anything close to the time delay requirement of Tare. We’d been considering it because it would make formally adopting the kids easier, but Kaoren very much wants Siame to be there, and I still have hopes of contacting my family. We won’t think about having more kids until after the wedding, which I think should give the ones we currently have enough time to feel that they really belong.

In a few days it’s the day we decided would be Rye’s birthday. He hasn’t mentioned it at all, and from the occasional fulminating glare Ys has been directing my way, I imagine she thinks we’ve forgotten. The presents I bought were unfortunately left behind, but I figured out a replacement and Kaoren and I have been colluding with Lohn and Mara in getting it ready, and also arranging a surprise party. Rye’s not openly looking concerned, though, and was in Seventh Heaven this afternoon because Kaoren took him out on the balcony and cut his hair off. It does make them look faintly alike, and it just made Rye so happy.

I’m not a Setari, so we weren’t sure if the Setari land grant counted for me, but when Kaoren queried the contact person they kind of laughed at him, asked if I had a piece of land in mind, and said hold on a moment, and all of a sudden I owned an island. The whole island, since my land grant appears to be anything I take my fancy to. I asked if I could change its name, and now my island is called "Arcadia", which pleases me to no end. It was that or call it Sydney.

Kaoren will keep his land grant and decide on where to use it much later. Possibly at Mesiath, because we both like it there, or possibly someplace we haven’t even seen yet. A summer house, or something for the kids. I wasn’t expecting to get the entire island, and could probably keep getting myself given bits of Muina, but the idea embarrasses me – especially because the grant of Arcadia hit the news about five minutes after it was made official. That at least pleased Rye – he’s the most excited by the prospect of living on the island and he came running out to ask if it was true. And Lohn and Mara dropped by, and said that they were going to apply for land on one of the cluster of islands just south of Arcadia, and that a lot of other Setari were thinking of following suit. The largest island is currently called Siriath, and is about three times the size of Arcadia and very close – you could shout at each other over the gap.

Makes me want to try and get a canoe made.

Friday, November 7

Public Speaking

Today was the ceremony of thanksgiving.

I was too tired for it (contributing no end to the talk about how horrible I look) because I’d woken up a few hours after midnight to sit with Lira, who was having a terrible time. I took her down to medical, but they’re still very unwilling to give any form of pain relief during interface installation, and because she’s taken a strong dislike to medical (no surprise there) I took her back up to our rooms and sat out on the balcony with her.

Lira didn’t particularly want to talk to me, just wanted not to be alone until she was finally exhausted enough to fall asleep. Thankfully the interface installation has completed, which not only means that she no longer has the headache from hell, but she has some incredibly distracting new toys to play with. Ys, Sen and Rye have all been very quick to show her the things they find most special about the interface, and she and Ys spent most of the ceremony talking silently to each other.

If I hadn’t been semi-conscious, I suppose I would have found the thanksgiving ceremony quite touching. Even the huge Moon Piazza isn’t nearly big enough to fit Pandora’s entire population any more, but the main ceremony was there, and there were multiple other gatherings across the city, along with a broadcast. The provisional council is a mix of three Tarens, three Kolarens and three Nurans nominated to draft and recommend laws (although they have to be ratified by KOTIS for some time to come). They did most of the speaking, but kept it relatively short, and then someone sang and I was just wondering if I could get away with falling asleep leaning against Kaoren when they announced me as the next speaker. Kaoren promises me he would have warned me if he’d known, but it was my own fault for not reading my email. Or their fault for having ceremonies in the mid-morning.

So I went up looking like a car-wreck survivor, with extra circles under my eyes from lack of sleep, and my voice all croaky. I’ve never stood up before that many people, and only got through it by focusing on the black-clad rows at the front.

"It’s nearly a full Muinan year since I first saw Pandora’s old town," I said. "It was the first sign of civilisation I’d found. I was so glad. And it was so empty." I paused, looking past the Setari to the endless swell of people, most sitting on cushions or the stone paving. "Even after I was found by the Tarens, I still felt alone, because everyone I cared about was on another world, and I couldn’t speak the language, and everything was strange. Some very kind people put a lot of effort into making me feel less alone, but I missed my family and I just wanted to go home. I’m not sure I would have believed a day like today could come so quickly. That Muina would not be an empty world, and that I could stand here and look out and in every direction see people who mattered to me, who have become part of a very extended family, and that they would have made this place home. I am so lucky to know you all, and I am very glad to be here."

That’s totally not the speech I would have made if I’d put any thought into it, and I was bright red at the end of it, and got off stage as quickly as I could manage before I burst into tears. I could tell from the way Kaoren’s eyes were nearly shut that he’d thought me tremendously funny, but he tucked me under his arm and Sen came and sat in my lap and I hid behind her. My punishment for looking so sick and exhausted during the ceremony was to be sent off to medical afterwards, where I promptly fell asleep.

Kaoren woke me in time for bedtime stories, and having finished the Kolaren story I began the rather challenging task of translating The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. My Taren is still a little shaky on complex dialogue (and some of the scans were blurry), but it went reasonably well with only a few extended tangents for explanations of exotic concepts like lions. Fortunately the version we’d scanned was illustrated.

I ended up with five engrossed listeners, since Kaoren is very interested in Earth’s stories as well. I want to read them every story I loved growing up. I think that more than anything else will finish making this home.

Kaoren’s asleep now, busy looking gorgeous. The squads are all back on duty tomorrow, and the platforms have been very obliging about starting to work again. Kaoren will be working at Kalasa. They want me to do some visualisations of Tare and Kolar as well, but the "she’s too injured" people are currently winning the argument.

Saturday, November 8

Education

Kaoren was at Kalasa most of the day, while almost every strong Telekinetic and Levitation talent was off in Mesiath clearing trees and seeding and feeding whitestone. Mori and Alay were my guards – I failed to win the "I don’t need babysitters" argument, but so long as I stay inside the building I don’t have to have them sitting right on me. Alay says I can consider them the day’s trainers, though with an arm in a sling and ribs protesting whenever I bend even slightly, it’s more training for the kids at the moment.

Rye’s fine with anyone giving him combat training, but both Ys and Lira are very doubtful about the whole thing. I told them that knowing how to beat up anyone who might attack them is a good thing, and Alay laughed at me and said I should take my own advice.

Alay’s laughing a lot more these days.

We’ve set a tentative date of five days from now for the kids to start attending the talent school again, since that should give Lira some time to adjust to the interface, and to just be more comfortable with being here. I can tell that Ys hates the idea, but is being very good about not arguing or showing how she feels. If anything, she seems even less eager to go than before.

Discussing the school has started me thinking about Rest Of My Life issues. I’m sure to have a fairly full schedule being Mum and whatever touchstone duties I can’t get out of, but I am thinking through a few possibilities for other things to do.

We’re waiting up now, until all the kids are thoroughly asleep, and we can put Rye' birthday present in his room.

Sunday, November 9

With Candles

Rye’s reaction this morning was so much fun. He woke before we did, and came running into our room, excited beyond words and then was too overcome to wake us up and stood there gasping, which did wake us up. And then he couldn’t speak, and when Kaoren sat up and put a hand on his head and said: "Welcome to your honour day" (the Taren equivalent of Happy Birthday), he flung his arms around him, and then got incredibly shy and tried to pretend he hadn’t. Kaoren hugged him carefully, and helped me up so I could too.

Rye’s present was a terrarium – one we’d had great difficulty fitting into his room and inspired by Taarel’s particularly magnificent one. We’d spent the last few days arranging for the plastiglass tank and the lights, and consulting with the botanic experts about plant selection. Once it had been assembled and planted up, Lohn and Mara had kept it in their room, and brought it in to us when the kids were asleep. They got a big kick out of the whole thing, and it was definitely a present which Rye appreciated. He was particularly amazed by one of the plants, a small-leafed ground cover with some little daisy flowers sticking up on slender stems. This was something called "gilly", which is a Nuran herb, and which the technicians very kindly resurrected from the flower Sen had given me, way back when I first met her. They’re actually quite pleased with it, and I gather it was a useful cooking ingredient on Nuri. Rye has one of the first clones they managed to construct, and most of the rest of his plants are Muinan herbs. Looking after them all will be exactly the kind of thing he most likes.

Even Ys approved, and showed it by leaning briefly against me as I watched Rye showing Kaoren each and every plant, and going over the information the botanists had provided. For Ys, that’s extremely demonstrative, and I squeezed her shoulder in return, but didn’t annoy her by actually saying anything.

Nor was this the only birthday treat we had in store. Since Maze was in charge of the duty roster, he had no trouble arranging for a couple of hours in the middle of the day so we could have a picnic lunch at Arcadia. Well, actually, given how complex the duty roster is, I think it was a lot of trouble, and it was extremely nice of him. But he looked so relaxed and happy that I think he was glad to do it. First, Second and Fourth were invited, and we brought huge picnic baskets of food (including a cake with candles, which is an Earth tradition I insisted on, although I had to get the candles specially made). They’d brought breathers this time, and Kaoren compounded Rye’s ecstasy by giving him a personal underwater lesson. I wasn’t in the condition to do more than sit in shallow water, but that suited Sen just fine, and I don’t think Ys is quite ready to go swimming underwater either, although she’d probably have nerved herself up to do it if pushed. Lira has never even been allowed to go near something as dangerous as a large body of water, and was very stiff and doubtful as Mara and Zee took her through her first swimming lesson, but Ys was quick to take her in hand, and I think helping Lira increased her own confidence.

After lots of swimming, we ate ourselves sick, and I taught everyone a translated version of "Happy birthday to you" and we all sang it to Rye, who went crimson and blew out his candles very enthusiastically. Then we went for exploratory walks, and checked out where the house would go according to our tentative plans, and looked at the forest behind it (discovering enough little animals to make Rye even more enthusiastic about living here). More than a few of the Setari went and had a look at the neighbouring islands, and the one south of Arcadia could pretty much be renamed "First Squad Island", judging from some of the discussions I overheard.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as unremittingly joyful as Rye was today. He radiated full-wattage joy until finally running out of steam around bath-time, and then he went all tired and sweetly shy again. It was a marvellously happy day for everyone, and I was particularly pleased with how much Maze enjoyed it. Houses and plants and children and animals he doesn’t have to kill.

Best of all, no pictures of us showed up on the news. The islands are far enough away from shore that if the Setari go ahead with their plans to snap up all the available land there, it will be an enjoyably private place. And with the generosity of the lands grants, they have enough to split the grant to a house there, and also land somewhere else. It’ll be quite a neighbourhood.

Monday, November 10

No Secrets

Kaoren and I have succeeded in arguing against Lira being on second level monitoring on the grounds that it will distress her. I have vague hopes of arguing my way off it as well. But she needed to know that everything I see and hear is recorded, and that if she tells me something important enough I’d have to tell at least Kaoren, who would then have to decide whether we can choose not to pass it on. That the things which were reported to KOTIS were theoretically private, but that stuff like my file being stolen could very well happen.

As you can imagine, Lira wasn’t terribly pleased, but was nicely sympathetic about me being stuck on second level monitoring. And, even more fortunately, Ys and Rye already knew about the monitoring from watching The Hidden War, since I belatedly realised that I’d never discussed this with them. I’m not altogether sure Ys would have forgiven me for telling Lira things she doesn’t know, and of course it hadn’t been necessary because KOTIS doesn’t feel the need to have reports on what any of the kids but Lira might say.

Tuesday, November 11

Settlers

Having my arm in a sling is driving me crazy. It’s awkward and clumsy and makes getting dressed and undressed a complete pain, and I’m very tired of doing everything one-handed. Today I’ve been wearing my uniform just because Kaoren was gone early and I couldn’t stand trying to put on anything more than my harness. I’ve got it in Summer mode, and it made me realise that I’ve been making an unconscious decision not to wear my uniform generally. Although it was very useful when I was kidnapped, overall I’ve just been happier to dress in my own clothes.

I’ve been doing schoolwork with Lira. She can read and write, but in Old Muinan, and she was very frustrated with the sudden leap backward. She doesn’t have Ys' absolute love of knowing things, and was finding Ys' explanations frustrating. Ys is relatively patient, but she’s so smart that remembering new words is incredibly easy for her, and in some ways it’s simpler for her, Rye and Sen because they haven’t learned slightly different characters, and slightly different spellings, and slightly different rules.

Lira’s no more of a fan of getting things wrong than Ys is, and more likely to get frustrated and give up, so I spent the morning doing basic kindergarten lessons with her, and laughing over the things I got wrong, and talking about what it was like when I first got here, having to repeat infant-grade school a couple of months after doing my high school final exams. And I managed to settle a convenient arrangement where Lira would do her lessons with Sen, to try and encourage Sen to pay a little attention in school. And Sen, of course, wants to be helpful to Lira.

We’re all getting quite good at understanding each other speaking, in Taren, old Muinan or Nuran, though often the subtleties of what we’re trying to say is lost. And I was disconcerted to discover that I seem to have introduced a few English words into the general language here – okay, and cool particularly – and I’ve been trying to work out how since The Hidden War didn’t have details of my actual speech, and there’s very little publicly available of me speaking. I think it’s gone out from the Setari and the support staff who work in the Setari building – maybe describing how I speak to people?

Wednesday, November 12

Future

Today was the weekend, and when we asked the kids what they wanted to do, I wasn’t altogether surprised to find that Arcadia was top of their list. Ever since our picnic on the roof was live-streamed, they’ve become extremely reluctant to go outside in exposed places (except possibly Sen, who thinks people being fascinated by her is a right state of affairs, and would probably most like to go visit the café again).

Nils and Jeh were my guards for the day, and Lohn and Mara came along too, but they all stayed off out on the shore while we had another swimming lesson. Lira was more confident this time around, and even Sen started paddling about as they played a game of water chasies. I sat paddling my legs in the water and leaning against Kaoren and feeling a weird sense of achievement every time one of them laughed.

After a group lunch, we all went on a walk to the island’s centre (Nils carrying Sen) and found a grassy meadow not quite in the middle which had things like partridges which shot off into the air and gave me a near heart attack. But it also had butterflies, and Sen revived and ran about trying to catch them. Nils was in a very laid-back mood and teased me mildly, but mostly just watched the kids with a smile while Mara told me about some of the work the senior Setari have been doing with the kids at the talent school. Assisting with talent training is something they’re used to, but the focus is rather different with the Nuran kids – not so intense and purposeful and disciplined.

"Even though the Kalrani were away from their families, they still had a home and returned to it during holidays," Mara said. "And always there was the focus of our purpose. The school here couldn’t be more different. Harder, in a way, for us to deal with."

"It doesn’t help that they think we’re shopping," Nils said. "Or want us to be. It adds a raw edge, although also some high entertainment. Most of the Kalrani try to impress, but they don’t try to sabotage each other in the hopes of winning some secret competition to be adopted."

"There’s only a couple like that," Mara said, with a wry glance at Nils[9]. "The Nuran household structure, full of feuds and rivalries and alliances, hasn’t quite let go of them. Those who have other household members here or in the town seem more secure and comfortable, grouping together. In some ways it helps, but it’s causing a lot of issues because some also tend to act as if they’ve inherited control over anyone who was once of their house. That group that took off to Nurenor, for instance, were almost all from three of the larger houses, and some of those of lower status were simply unable to bring themselves to disobey orders from seniors of the house. And belonging to a major household meant immediate prestige, even if you weren’t at the head of it, and so there’s children who no longer have any semblance of a house and miss it terribly, and even when they have others of their house with them, find that their house has no power here, and they’re in a culture which heavily emphasises individual merit. All this on top of losing their parents."

"And the news service is constantly providing touching adoption stories," Nils said, dryly. "Where lucky brat number 4000 catches a family’s eye and is no longer just one of many powerless orphans herded about with the mass. An immediate gain of security, prestige. The oldest ones are finding it hardest – less likely to be adopted, struggling with schooling requirements they would never have dreamed of, and facing the prospect of filtering to the bottom because no-one is going to reach out and pick them and they’ll be transitioning to being responsible for themselves soonest. And then we go and dangle ourselves in front of them – beyond you showing up and saying I need a few more, we’re probably as close to instant prestige as they can see right now."

"I don’t think I could do that," I said. "Pick, I mean. Sen adopted me, not the other way around, and I got too emotionally involved with all three of them to not keep caring. Lira was the same way – she just happened. But you’re thinking about it, aren’t you?"

I was asking Mara, who nodded. "Jeh, Ketz and Grif, too. Of course, right now we’re all in barracks, and don’t have the same push to retire, but if we can get these houses built, then between us and the school we should be able to manage it. And you’re right – the idea of picking is strangely daunting. Not so much for making a choice which will work for us, but because then there are all these children we didn’t pick. And for every atrocious creature shamelessly trying to win favour, there are a half-dozen who I would be glad to know better. And even the atrocious creatures are breaking themselves apart inside. It’s one of the big downsides to having Muina cut off from a fresh influx of settlers – KOTIS intended to have each and every minor settled with families as soon as possible, because they need that level of care. You only have to look at these four to see how much a sense of belonging does to offset the weight of trauma."

The idea of Jeh, Ketz and Grif kept me occupied for a while, and I still don’t quite know if they’re intending to set up one house together, but I can see how much Mara’s looking forward to the idea of having a home and building a family. She says she and Lohn are thinking of simply having two weddings (commitment ceremonies) to handle having lots of important people on two different planets.

I also couldn’t help but notice that Nils was very quiet the rest of the day. He and Maze, who would both be great fathers, and are both caught up in their feelings for someone who’s dead. Maze, though, seems to be at peace with where he is, while Nils is just cutting himself apart inside. I’m willing to bet Zee and Raiten are bothering him, too – they’re working together on squad coordination to give Maze more time off, and always seem to be off somewhere chatting.

Ys also went quiet in the afternoon. It’s because of going to talent school tomorrow, and she makes me want to tag along and stand over her protectively. Really, given how brave Ys was trying to help Siame and me in the lake, you’d think there’d be some kids there who would see her as more than a servant. But at least I think she’s readier to believe that Kaoren and I value all four of them, and that I have succeeded in creating the sense of belonging Mara was talking about.

Friday, November 14

Friends, Family, Home

Ys came back from school today looking immensely relieved. Mara was able to clue me in on why, since she’d been at the talent school that morning. Ys hasn’t suddenly become popular or anything, although one or two of the kids seem to have made slight overtures (which unfortunately Ys is completely disinterested in). But Lira is the focus of an immense amount of fascination. An actual Lantaren, beautiful, a second touchstone, hailed as my saviour and a brave spy who’d worked against the Cruzatch and – perhaps most importantly – with lots of syllables in her name.

I should have seen it immediately. Lira’s the first friend Ys has ever had – a rather different relationship to Sen and Rye both, who she treats in a more parental way. Lira and Ys bonded thoroughly sharing moments of scorn for me, and just get along very well. Going back to the talent school meant there would be dozens of rivals for Lira’s friendship, and the fact that Ys and Rye were just servants would almost certainly be underlined, and Ys wasn’t quite certain how Lira would react to that. Mara couldn’t give me all the details, but it was plain that Lira wasn’t terribly keen on the mass overtures, and when Mara had headed out for her shift Lira was welded to Ys' side and was glaring furiously at one particular clutch of kids.

Lira gave me an earful herself when Ys and Sen were safely in the bath (Ys still gives Sen a bath, and I suspect hasn’t realised that Lira’s probably perfectly aware of the scars on her back, after days of watching us invisibly).

Lira had said a few very rude things to Ys' greatest detractors and been lectured (no doubt very gently) by their age-group’s supervisor about good manners, and wanted to make quite clear to me that she had no intention of being nice to anyone who thought Ys and Rye didn’t belong with us. I just said: "Good for you," and told her to let me know if anybody bothered them too much.

I had a lot of fun reading the latest chapter of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe to them this evening. They’re very caught up in Edmund, about whether he should be rescued or deserves his fate. Sen adores Lucy, of course, and she’s far more sympathetic toward Edmund than Ys, Lira and Rye are. Ys is monstrously impatient to know what happens next. I suspect she usually reads ahead for these night-time stories, and because it’s in English she can’t. Being all impatient does mean that she doesn’t let Sen linger in the bath a moment longer than she considers necessary. So funny.

I adore them. Kaoren and I are both finding abrupt parenthood surprisingly to our taste, and the awful tension and after-effects of the Oriath collapse is fading. We’re growing increasingly confident that we’re safe now, that the Cruzatch aren’t coming back, and the pressure tearing the spaces apart is gone. My only real downside at the moment is my complete lack of sex life. My face has only just stopped hurting enough that Kaoren’s willing to kiss me, and neither of us find it much fun when I get into an uncomfortable position at night and wake up really needing some pain medication. It’s getting better though – wonders of Taren technology and so forth.

Just asked Kaoren what he most wanted to do as a Setari over the next few years – whether he wanted to continue with Ena work, or was more interested in exploring Muina.

He had to pause to think about it, but then said very firmly: "Both. There is an intensity to Ena work which I – which all of Fourth, I think – are not quite ready to give up. The standard we need, the care and the challenge, that is very much a part of what we have been, and it is something which is still needed, even with the Ddura’s aid. But the explorers of Muina, those who rediscover and see with new eyes this world which is our past, that is what the Setari are becoming. Some, like First, have already made that shift, but we all will. We are all changed. We cannot go back to what we were before."

He held up his hand, palm-down, and recognising the moment I reached up to meet him, palm-to-palm.

"We would not want to."

Saturday, November 15

Citizen of Muina

A little boy drowned today, which has sent me into a minor spin of parental stress over all the things my four could do to themselves on an island. The interface does make it safer, since they can call for help, and an alarm is set off if they’re unconscious. The kid who drowned was one of the interface hold-outs, and I can’t help but think about whether he’d be alive if he’d had it.

KOTIS is also struggling with moonfall. For a long while people stayed respectfully away from the old town during moonfall, but gradually free breathable alcohol has meant more and more people of all ages deciding they want to stroll through the old town when the moon’s out. The new law-makers have to decide whether it should be allowed, and how to cope with all the accidents and problems which might be caused by people who are aether-drunk.

That’s something they’re going to be dealing with at every platform town as Muina grows in population. Great pictures this morning of mounds of people sleeping in the amphitheatre. All very well in Summer, but probably not so good a thing in Winter.

I figure the old Muinans living here must have just gotten drunk once a week, since the aether flowed down off the roofs of their houses. Even little kids. The pro-aether people are arguing that it would function as a kind of health care, and you don’t get to overdose levels if you don’t go and sit on the roof or dance about in the amphitheatre. At least it doesn’t seem to make most people violent, like real alcohol, but obviously there’ll be incidents like Kajal deciding to force Kaoren to fight him. I suspect aether-effects are one of the reasons the old Muinans specially built the platform towns, rather than incorpor–

* * *

Wow. Had to stop writing because Zee just dropped out of the sky on me. I’d been writing sitting under the tree on top of the Setari building, with Par and Sonn spending their guarding time in a training session down the lake-side slope, when all of a sudden I looked up and Zee was there.

There in a Goddess of Thunder and Lightning kind of way, standing over me in all of her toned six-foot-whateverness, glaring.

I don’t think I squeaked. Probably. But I certainly felt mouse-like, staring up at her, and couldn’t find anything more useful to do than gape at her.

"I’ve had it with being told that those dreams were so traumatic and secret that you can’t discuss them in any way," she said, her voice tight and angry. "What were they?

I opened my mouth, searching for some way to explain that I simply couldn’t, but she made a chopping motion with her hand. "Just tell me."

I’ve never seen Zee act remotely like that before, so full of repressed anger and frustration. I had no idea what to say, of course, because I really wanted to tell Zee, but was sure Nils would hate me for it. But Zee was looking like she’d hate me for not telling her.

"Did you know that night was Helese Surion’s birthday?" I asked cautiously. Zee made a dismissive gesture and I hurried on awkwardly: "I had no idea that Nils and Helese had been together. The first dream was a real shock to me, that this person who everyone only ever mentions in connection with Maze was someone who was everything to Nils. No-one acts as if she was important to him, even though he was just – so completely hers."

Zee had had no idea. She stopped looking quite so angry and just stared at me.

"Maze had to explain it for me – that when Nils saw how strongly Helese felt about Maze, he made out that they’d just drifted apart, for all that it came close to destroying him to see she felt that way. He’s too good an actor – no-one seems to think Helese had any real history before Maze because Nils goes about trying to make sure no-one ever takes him seriously, because he has this promise with himself to never really care about anyone again. But with you, he can’t stop, so he–"

I broke off, a little afraid of the expression on Zee’s face. Absolutely furious. Then she just left without another word, and I looked down the hill at Par and Sonn staring up at me, and wondered what to do.

After a lot of agonising I sent a channel request to Maze and told him very guiltily that I thought Zee was going to go kill Nils and that it was my fault. I can just picture Maze’s expression.

But he calmly contacted Nils and told him to head in Zee’s direction (because he’s not keen on having senior Setari arguments played out in front of an audience). He didn’t go after Zee himself, but instead came to see me and assured me that no matter how angry Zee might be about anything, she wasn’t likely to try and kill Nils. I think he also came to check to see if Zee had yelled me into a wibbling heap. Maze was very good at making it all into much less of a drama, and came down and distracted Par and Sonn during lunch so that they at least wouldn’t ask why I was all wide-eyed and blotchy.

The details of what Nils and Zee said to each other I don’t know. I haven’t seen either since because Maze told them both to take a week’s leave, and they did exactly that – by setting their status to do not disturb and going off on a camping trip together. Nils did open a channel to me briefly, but only said: "Just because Zee bullied you into that doesn’t mean you’re not getting spanked," and laughed and broke the connection. He sounded awesomely happy. Kaoren’s right about the senior squads being most changed: they’re all starting to move on with their lives.

I’m having to use all of my dubious moral fibre to not make a projection so I can see what Zee said to Nils.

Sunday, November 16

This day today

So it’s been one year today. I spent the afternoon writing a letter to Mum, in preparation for the realignment of the natural gate to Earth. The technicians think it’s going to open in the next couple of months, and I’m putting together a well-protected package to send, complete with nanotech-forged Australian stamps.

Along with the letter, I’ve had a number of photos printed up to include. They were a bit tricky, since I didn’t want to have anything undeniably alien in them, and I particularly didn’t want any pictures of me with fading yellow and green bruises down one side of my face, or a sling. Fortunately that’s all on the same side. One recent image showing me in profile, tickling Sen’s feet on the couch (Sen is fantastically ticklish and goes into spasms of delight), and I included a few older ones where my hair was still long (particularly one from when Kaoren, Sen and Rye fell asleep on the couch with me, and I’m looking down at Ys). The rest don’t have me at all. A shot of Ys and Lira practicing their synchronised scowling. First Squad. Our waterfall.

And I’m going to send Mum these diaries.

I’ve been keeping them up out of habit, rather than out of that need to talk that it helped with early on, and nothing could explain more clearly to Mum just why I’m staying. We’ll be together every time she reads them, and she too can come to love First Squad, and Kaoren, and four children who were alone and frightened, and are so happy to belong.

I’ll still have my log record of the diaries, so I can read them to Kaoren, and look back over how much everything has changed. At all the people I’ve been since I walked home from school. Survivor. Stray. Lab Rat. Caddy. Assignment. Love. Weapon. Spy. Celebrity. Maker of dragons. Machine component. Saver of worlds. Mum.

And, soon, uni student.

I’m hoping to beat Ys there, though she’s sure to go excel in sciences, while I’m thinking of a vague selection in the Arts: Literature. Mythology. Archaeology. Learning this world’s stories so that it continues to become mine, and then maybe bringing some of my world’s stories to Muina.

And one day I am going to figure out a way for the rest of my family to become Muinans as well. Till then, I hope words will cross galaxies for me.

Letter

Dear Mum (and Dad and Jules and Aunties and Nick and Alyssa and everyone)

I am here, not there, and that’s now a choice that I’ve made. I’m no longer trying to get home, because this has become home. I hate that it’s an either/or choice, and that there’s no way to visit. I miss so many things, but I’m happy here now, and unless I was sure I could get back here, I can’t risk even trying for a quick visit. I’m hoping for a yearly letter, at least.

I’m glad you had the chance to see Kaoren when you last saw me. He and I have been engaged nearly four months now. I think you might like him. The wedding’s scheduled for six weeks after my twentieth birthday. The long wait was initially because of legal requirements and is pretty meaningless, since we live together already, and are working on plans for getting a house built. And we have four children!

They’re orphans, and kind of adopted us, and we’re going through the process of formally adopting them in return. Ys is the oldest (we think). She, Lira and Rye are all around eleven. Sen is four. They’re really great kids, and far less bratty than I ever was. I’m not really Mum to them, but I feel very parental, and I think we’ve built up some trust. Fretting over them makes me want to hit myself for all the times I was a complete bitch to you.

It’s been a very dramatic year for me, on top of ending up here in the first place. I guess you could say I’ve been gainfully employed, and Kaoren and I are well settled for money, so I’m not having to stress about day-to-day stuff. It was very hard to adjust at first, particularly because I had to learn a new language, and I was just so outside everything. But some very nice people took me under their wing and it was a bit like gaining six older brothers and sisters, and I’ve developed an extended family of people who look out for me.

I’m hoping that one day it’ll be easier to get between here and there and it would be great if you could come here. I’ve enclosed a bunch of photos of me and the kids and some of the people who are important to me and the place where our house will be. I had to get my hair cut really short and hate it and hope it grows back quickly.

I love you. I should have said it a thousand times. Miss you always.

Always.

Cass.

The End

Glossary

Agowla - The (fictional) high school Cass attended in Sydney.

AI - Artificial Intelligence.

Arenrhon - Settlement at site of underground installation of the Lantarens.

Aspro - Aspirin. Headache relief.

Atanra - A facility constructed near to the Muinan rift into deep-space. The word means passage.

Authoritah - This is an indication that Cassandra has watched South Park, and not a typo.

Aversan - The old Muinan name for the platform town discovered in her month on Muina (initially called Goralath by the Tarens).

Beanie - A close-fitting knitted hat.

Breaking, The - A Taren term for the disaster which shattered the spaces.

Buckley’s chance - Buckley was a convict in Australia who escaped and survived by living with Australian Aborigines. The phrase means "nearly impossible".

Café Crescent - Pandora’s first café.

Carche Landing - The main airport in Unara.

Casszilla - Rawr!

Caves of Nonora - A Taren children’s story, where Til, Magara and Nosk discover an entrance to the kingdom of the Tarull, deep below Unara.

Channa - A rocky planet inhabited by ex-Muinans living a nomadic tribal life. Tare has established a mine on Channa in an area of land isolated from the inhabitants.

Chapstick - Lip moisturiser.

Chune - One of the ships KOTIS uses to travel between Tare, Kolar and Muina.

Copped a Serve - Received a barrage of anger.

Council of Tare - The Lahanti (mayors) of the cities of Tare.

Cruzatch - A dangerous humanoid Ionoth, shadow burning white.

Dazenti - Swarming phasic Ionoth: capable of passing through walls.

Ddura - An enormous energy being created by the Lantarens.

Deep-space - The large portion of the Ena which exists between the memory spaces. It is white in appearance, and filled with gates which open directly to real-space worlds.

Deep-space Ionoth - Ionoth which are formed and dwell not in the relatively small Spaces, but instead in Deep-space.

Delar - A Taren measurement unit – roughly 75 centimetres.

Despawn - Disappear, vanish. Taken from computer games where a monster is said to spawn when it appears in the game world, and despawn when it disappears (usually after being killed).

Diodel - One of the ships KOTIS uses to travel between Tare, Kolar and Muina.

Do Not Go Gentle - "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night", a poem by Dylan Thomas.

Dohl Array - A series of underwater farms on Tare.

Drone - An advanced robot, usually used for scanning and monitoring.

Drop Bears - Important Tourist Advisory: Please wear protective head gear when walking beneath gum trees in Australia.

Ena - A dimension connected to the thoughts, memories, dreams and imagination of living beings.

Ena manipulation - A psychic talent which can change the substance of the Ena, particularly in stabilising gates between spaces. It can also be used in a limited way to change reality.

Expecto Patronum - Looks like Cass has read Harry Potter.

Escort quest - A mission in an online game involving protection of a non-player character while they travel.

Faer - The Senior Captain in the Taren entertainment The Hidden War. Played by Eyle Sured.

Fahr - Kolaren treacle tea.

Falazen - A platform town ruled by border collies.

Fan service - Revealing or provocative shots of characters in anime/manga.

Fanfic - Fiction based on the stories of others and/or fiction involving a person of whom the writer is a fan.

Firiana - A platform town east of Pandora, situated among the islands of the surri.

First level monitoring - Interface monitoring which triggers an alert if certain conditions are reached (eg. loss of consciousness, heart attack). All residents of Tare are on first level monitoring.

Francesca - Francesca is a flowering shrub also known as "Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow" because its flowers fade from purple to violet to near-white as they age.

Gate - A tear or rift between spaces/worlds.

Gate Sight - A psychic talent which can judge the status of gates between spaces.

Gate-lock - An enclosure built around a gate from near-space to real-space to prevent Ionoth from passing through.

Gelzz - A now nearly-extinct cave-dwelling Taren insect noted for its tendency to admit a lingering rotten odour as a defence mechanism.

Goralath - The name originally given to the ruins where Pandora is later established.

Gorra - The first island settled on Tare.

Hasata - A city on Tare.

House Dayen - One of the leading Lantaren groups on pre-destruction Muina, and architects of the Pillars project.

House Renar - A Nuran House which was given the care of Sentarestel after her parents' deaths.

House Zolen - A Lantaren group on pre-destruction Muina believed responsible for the Arenrhon installation.

HSC - Higher School Certificate. Received when graduating from high school in Australia.

Ian Thorpe - A famous Australian swimmer.

In-skin - An immersive interface experience where most of the senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste – are stimulated.

Interface - An in-body nanite installation used by Tarens as personal computers/the Taren internet.

Ionoth - Creatures which form in the Ena, usually remnants of the dreams and nightmares of inhabited planets.

Ista - An honorific for medical doctors.

Isten - Professor.

Joden - The Taren equivalent of a minute, though the unit is longer than an Earth minute. One hundred joden equal a kasse.

Kadara - Naturally-forming massive Ionoth.

Kalane - A medium-sized island city near the Dohl Array.

Kalasa - The training city of the Lantarens.

Kalrani - Trainees not yet qualified as Setari.

Kasse - The Taren equivalent of an hour, spanning approximately two and a half Earth hours.

Kaszandra - The KOTIS research facility on Kalasa’s island.

Keszen Point - An outlying island of Konna used for warehousing.

Kolar - A hot, arid world settled by Muinan refugees, and advanced technologically by the Tarens.

Konna - Both the city and the island where the main KOTIS base is located on Tare.

KOTIS - An acronym for the "Agency for Ionoth Research and Protection".

Kuna - Supplementary memory provided by the interface.

Lahanti - Leaders of the cities of Tare – an equivalent to a mayor of a city-state.

Lantar/Lantarens - The ruling class of Muina before the disaster. Powerful psychics.

Lastier - A fictional equivalent of Kaoren Ruuel from the Taren entertainment The Hidden War. Played by Teral Saith.

Litara - One of the ships KOTIS uses to travel between Tare, Kolar and Muina.

Lolcat - I can haz cheeseburger?

Lord Vetinari - A most Machiavellian ruler, found in the Discworld books of Terry Pratchett.

Luim - One of the ships KOTIS uses to travel between Tare, Kolar and Muina.

Machiavelli - To Cass, Machiavelli is "Lord Vetinari, except real". Niccolo Machiavelli was an Italian Renaissance writer whose book The Prince sets out a model of political stability achieved through not necessarily moral means.

March of Dawn - A traditional Muinan ceremony held in Spring. Flowers are carried to symbolise the birth of a new year.

Massives - Ionoth of unusually large dimensions.

Mea Culpa - Through my fault - acknowledging an error/taking the blame.

Mesara - One of the ships KOTIS has assigned to Muina.

Mesiath - A southern hemisphere city in a tall tree forest.

Moon Piazza - An enormous crescent shaped open area at the eastern base of the amphitheatre hill at Pandora. [Desza Tohl in Taren.]

Muina - A world abandoned after a disaster brought about by the Lantaren psychics.

Nanites - A machine or robot on a microscopic scale.

Nanna Nap - A short nap in the daytime, for the less active grandmothers.

Near-space - The envelope of Ena immediately surrounding a world, full of reflections of the world as it currently is – and it’s most recent nightmares.

Night on Bald Mountain - A composition by Modest Mussorgsky. Cass has encountered it in Disney’s Fantasia.

Nikko Pen - Permanent marker.

Noob - A new gamer who does not fully understand how to play/someone new.

Nori - The main character of the Taren entertainment The Hidden War. Played by Lanset Kameer.

Not happy, Jan - A popular phrase taken from an Australian television commercial for Yellow Pages.

NPCs - Non-player characters – a gaming term for characters in a game which you are not expected to fight.

Nuri - A pastoral moon inhabited by ex-Muinans.

Nurioth - One of the largest ruined cities on Muina.

OMGWTF - Oh my god, what the fuck?!

Oriath - A Muinan city, ruled by House Zolen.

Ormon of Nent - The hereditary ruler of Kolar’s northern kingdom.

Pandora - First Taren settlement on Muina.

PAoN - Profound Awareness of Nils

Path Sight - A talent for location.

Pelamath - An equatorial platform town located on top of a plateau.

Pippin - A small animal of excessive cuteness.

Pissed off - Made angry. [Pissed can mean angry or drunk in Australia.]

Public Space - Virtual décor visible to all interface users/anything accessible to all interface users.

PVP - Combat in online games where players fight other players rather than computer-controlled opponents.

Pwn - Defeat comprehensively – a gamer term.

Rotation - Setari missions in the Ena designed to cover Ionoth respawn near Taren cities.

Rotational space - A space in the Ena which moves so that its gates regularly align and move out of alignment.

Rukmor - Appointed heads of various sciences and arts on Tare. Forms part of the world government.

Rule 34 - Rule 34 of the Internet: If it exists, there will be porn of it.

Schoolies - Australian high school graduates celebrating the end of school during "Schoolies Week". Primarily located around the Gold Coast in Queensland.

Searns - A Setari squad member on the Taren entertainment The Hidden War. Roak Larion.

Second level monitoring - A safety/security interface setting causing all sights and sounds experienced by the monitored person to be retained in a secure log which can be accessed under exceptional circumstances.

Setari - Psychic combat Specialists trained since childhood to combat Ionoth.

Sf&f - Science fiction and fantasy.

Shared Space - The interface equivalent of a conference call.

Shattering, The - A Nuran term for the disaster which shattered the spaces.

Shim - A Squad Emerald Setari in the Taren entertainment The Hidden War.

Smex - Sex with added m.

Smutfic - Erotic fanfiction.

Solaria - An icy world settled by ex-Muinans. Currently not located by Tare.

Southern Ancipars - The three elected rulers of Kolar’s southern country.

Soylent Green - Is people!

Spaces - A concept used in multiple contexts on Tare, covering world, dimension, area, region of the interface, and many others, but most particularly a bubble containing a fragment of a world remembered and reproduced by the Ena.

Stickie - A parasitic Ionoth capable of living within a host human. Difficult to detect.

Stilt - A spindly-legged deep-space Ionoth.

Stray - A person who walked through a wormhole through the Ena to another planet.

Super Sight Six - An old Taren TV series about psychic detectives.

Surri - A native Muinan animal with an appearance of slender, dog-like seals.

Suyul - A pink flower (also pink/white-skinned).

Swoops - A variety of deep-space Ionoth resembling a pterodactyl.

Tai - Old Muinan for Lake

Tai Medlair - The Old Muinan name for the lake where Pandora is located.

Tairo - A kick-ass ball sport.

Talent - A psychic ability.

Tanty - Tantrum.

Tanz - Taren air transport.

Tarani - A many-legged deep-space Ionoth reminiscent of a caterpillar.

Tare - A harsh, storm-wracked world settled by Muinan refugees. The highly technologically advanced inhabitants live crammed into massive whitestone cities.

Taren year - One third of an Earth year.

The Hidden War - A Taren entertainment based on the Setari.

Therouk Island - A food processing island, with a small residential portion.

Third level monitoring - Active observation of everything a subject sees and hears.

Thousand Cats, A - See Neil Gaiman’s "Dream of a Thousand Cats" in the Sandman series.

Thredbo - An Australian ski resort.

Timesa - A food processing island, with a moderate residential portion.

tl;dr - Too long; didn’t read.

Tola - A classification of Ionoth which have little physical substance.

Toolies - Adults preying on teenagers during Schoolies Week/pretending to be a Schoolie.

Touchstone - The subject of the story.

True-space - The world, not the Ena.

Tsa - An honorific which is the equivalent for Mr/Mrs/Ms/Miss.

Tsaile - Commander.

Tsee - Setari Squad Captain.

Tsur - Director.

Tupal Rock - A small cluster of rocks which form the nearest island to Pandora.

Twig/twigged - Realise.

Tyu - A zither-like musical instrument.

Unara - The largest city on Tare, located on the island of Wehana.

Unco - Uncoordinated.

Unstable rotation - A rotation where the spaces are more likely to change and bring unexpected situations.

Wangst - Self-indulgent angst.

Wehana - The largest island on Tare, almost entirely covered by the city of Unara.

Wharra - One of the ships KOTIS uses to travel between Tare, Kolar and Muina.

Whitestone - A building substance formed with nanites.

Wuss - Wimp, coward.

Wut - What, with added incredulity.

Year 10 Formal - An end-of-year dress up dance held by schools in Australia.

Zarath - The nobility of Nuri

Zelkasse - A quarter of a kasse.

Character List – Setari (Original)

First Squad

Maze Surion (m)

Zee Annan (f)

Lohn Kettara (m)

Mara Senez (f)

Alay Gainer (f)

Ketzaren Spel (f)

Second Squad

Grif Regan (m)

Jeh Omai (f)

Nils Sayate (m)

Keer Charal (m)

Enma Dolan (f)

Bree Tcho (f)

Third Squad

Meer Taarel (f)

Della Meht (f)

Eeli Bata (f)

Tol Sefen (m)

Geo Chise (m)

Rite Orla (f)

Fourth Squad

Kaoren Ruuel (m)

Fiar Sonn (f)

Par Auron (m)

Glade Ferus (m)

Charan Halla (f)

Mori Eyse (f)

Fifth Squad

Hast Kajal (m)

Dorey Nise (m)

Faver Elwes (f)

Kire Palanty (m)

Tralest Seet (m)

Seyen Rax (m)

Sixth Squad

Elen Kormin (f)

Sten Ammas (m)

Juna Quane (m)

Del Roth (m)

Meleed Aluk (f)

Kester Am-roten (m)

Seventh Squad

Atara Forel (f)

Pol Tsennen (m)

Tez Mema (m)

Bodey Residen (m)

Aheri Dahlen (f)

Saitel Raph (m)

Eighth Squad

Ro Kanato (m)

Pala Hasen (f)

Seeli Henaz (f)

Zhou Kade (m)

Kye Trouban (m)

Zama Bryze (m)

Ninth Squad

Desa Kaeline (f)

Zael Toure (f)

Rebar Dolas (m)

Oran Thomasal (m)

Kahl Anya (f)

Terel Revv (m)

Tenth Squad

Els Haral (m)

Loris Darm (f)

Sell Tens (f)

Joren Mane (f)

Fahr Sherun (m)

Netra Kantan (m)

Eleventh Squad

Seq Endaran (f)

Kire Couran (f)

Yaleran Genera (m)

Palest Wen (m)

Zare Seeth (m)

Den Dava (m)

Twelfth Squad

Zan Namara (f)

Roake Lenton (m)

Dess Charn (f)

Sora Nels (m)

Tenna Drysen (m)

Tahl Kiste (m)

Character List – Setari (Later)

First Squad

Maze Surion (m)

Zee Annan (f)

Lohn Kettara (m)

Mara Senez (f)

Alay Gainer (f)

Ketzaren Spel (f)

Kian Farn (m)

Az Norivan (f)

Second Squad

Grif Regan (m)

Jeh Omai (f)

Nils Sayate (m)

Keer Charal (m)

Enma Dolan (f)

Bree Tcho (f)

Trill Nala (f)

Somal Joen (m)

Third Squad

Meer Taarel (f)

Della Meht (f)

Eeli Bata (f)

Tol Sefen (m)

Geo Chise (m)

Rite Orla (f)

Shin Morel (m)

Elory Tedar (f)

Fourth Squad

Kaoren Ruuel (m)

Fiar Sonn (f)

Par Auron (m)

Glade Ferus (m)

Charan Halla (f)

Mori Eyse (f)

Rada Dae (m)

Sael Toren (m)

Fifth Squad

Hast Kajal (m)

Dorey Nise (m)

Faver Elwes (f)

Kire Palanty (m)

Tralest Seet (m)

Seyen Rax (m)

Forrez Wen (f)

Tyne Upzor (m)

Sixth Squad

Elen Kormin (f)

Est Jorion (f)

Juna Quane (m)

Del Roth (m)

Meleed Aluk (f)

Kester Am-roten (m)

Ture Melodez (f)

Sade Seeny (f)

Seventh Squad

Atara Forel (f)

Pol Tsennen (m)

Tez Mema (m)

Bodey Residen (m)

Aheri Dahlen (f)

Saitel Raph (m)

Kahl Anya (f)

Hea Keth (m)

Eighth Squad

Ro Kanato (m)

Pala Hasen (f)

Seeli Henaz (f)

Zhou Kade (m)

Kye Trouban (m)

Zama Bryze (m)

Terel Revv (m)

Wyrum Zak (m)

Ninth Squad

Desa Kaeline (f)

Zael Toure (f)

Rebar Dolas (m)

Oran Thomasal (m)

Moraty Less (m)

Dyru Keszaden (f)

Tath Ba-Raften (m)

Olena Kyru (f)

Tenth Squad

Els Haral (m)

Loris Darm (f)

Sell Tens (f)

Joren Mane (f)

Fahr Sherun (m)

Netra Kantan (m)

Treeku Wize (m)

Kivel Nu (m)

Eleventh Squad

Seq Endaran (f)

Kire Couran (f)

Yaleran Genera (m)

Palest Wen (m)

Zare Seeth (m)

Den Dava (m)

Marine Kasaty (m)

Velven Arava (m)

Twelfth Squad

Zan Namara (f)

Roake Lenton (m)

Dess Charn (f)

Sora Nels (m)

Tenna Drysen (m)

Tahl Kiste (m)

Sare Elehy-Ahl (f)

Dunare Rial (f)

Thirteenth Squad

Teer Alare (m)

Tekly Roth (f)

Elsen Dry (f)

Next Urally (m)

Rail Sorela (m)

Paza Lagden (m)

*not assigned Kalrani

Fourteenth Squad

Kin Lara (m)

Pen Alaz (f)

Greve Sanya (f)

Taree Jax (f)

Parally Goff (m)

Rish Udara (f)

*not assigned Kalrani

Kolar’s Squad One

Raiten Shaf (m)

Arad Nalaz (m)

Meral Katzyen (f)

Laram Diav (f)

Dell Taranza (f)

Korali Aerieword (m)

Squad Two

Taska Ayle (f)

Integel Fel-Argen (m)

Roka Deslenkar (f)

Mete Arby (f)

Saleek Argule (m)

Hearan Brookend (f)

Squad Three

Arat Turian (f)

Doar Noran (m)

Tana Brez (f)

Kasan Olan (f)

Dree Mittaha (f)

Ness Tuse (f)

Nuran Setari

Inisar (m)

Korinal (f)

Serray (m)

Orial (f)

Mila (f)

Trelasetar (m)

Jaselasker (m)

Selreven (f)

Otarien (m)

Character List - Other

Alyssa Caldwell (f) - Cassandra’s best friend.

Arden Ruuel (m) - Kaoren Ruuel’s older brother. An artist and former Kalrani.

Barl Miks (m) - KOTIS security detail at Pandora.

Cassandra Devlin (f) - An Aussie teenager not enjoying her big adventure.

Cham Anore (m) - Taren Setari and member of the original First Squad, killed by massive.

Clere Ganaran (m) - KOTIS liaison.

Dase Canlan (m) - A junior KOTIS archaeologist.

Deen Tarmian (f) - KOTIS liaison.

Denasan (m) - A Solarian stray advising at Pandora.

Durenatar (m) - Sentarestel’s father.

Elemnar (f) - A Nuran Setari. Sight Sight talent.

Elless Royara (f) - KOTIS technician.

Elizabeth (Bet) Wilson (f) - Cassandra’s aunt.

Evva Nozen (f) - KOTIS security detail at Pandora.

Far Dara (m) - A warehouse keeper.

Fiionarestel (f) - A murdered Nuran Sight Sight talent. Her daughter is Sentarestel.

Hedar Dayn (m) - Kalrani Ena manipulation talent.

Hadla Esem (m) - KOTIS security detail.

Helen Middledell (f) - aka Her Mightiness or HM. A well-off and popular girl who goes to Agowla School.

Helese Surion (f) - Original First Squad captain, killed by a massive.

Intena Jun (f) - Former KOTIS publicity officer.

Iskel Teretha (m) - Administrative person in charge of the KOTIS research facility Kaszandra on Kalasa’s island.

Islen Lap Dolan (m) - Senior KOTIS botanist.

Islen Lothen Ormeral (m) - KOTIS archaeologist.

Islen Merle Nakano (f) - Senior KOTIS animal expert.

Islen Rel Duffen (f) - Senior KOTIS archaeologist.

Islen Rale Tezart (m) - Senior KOTIS psychic technology expert.

Ista Tel Chemie (f) - KOTIS medic assigned to Setari.

Ista Del Temen (f) - KOTIS medic assigned to Pandora.

Ista Kestal Leema (f) - KOTIS medic assigned to Pandora.

Ista Noin Tremmar (f) - KOTIS medic assigned to Setari.

Isten Sel Notra (f) - Pre-eminent scientist researching the Ena.

Jelan Scal (m) - Psychic technology scientist.

Jenna Wilson (f) - A friend of Cassandra’s in Sydney.

Jorly Kennez (f) - The first Setari to die on duty.

Julian (Jules) Devlin (m) - Cassandra’s younger brother.

Karasayen (f) - A Nuran orphan of remorseless perspicacity.

Katha Rade (f) - A junior KOTIS archaeologist.

Keeri Nell (f) - KOTIS security detail at Pandora.

Kess Anasi (m) - Kalrani Ena manipulation talent.

Ketta Lents (f) - Wife of Orren Lents – stockbroker.

Kimirenar (m) - Head of the Nuran House Renar.

Kinear Rote (m) - Kalrani Ena manipulation talent, one of twins.

Kisikar Sorn (m) - Taren Setari and member of the original First Squad, retired.

Laura Devlin (f) - Cassandra’s mother.

Leam Marda (m) - Unara Transport Department official.

Liane Lents (f) - Daughter of Orren and Ketta Lents.

Lianzrenar (m) - Nuran orphan of House Renar.

Liranadestar (f) - An earlier touchstone.

Mede Orra (f) - Taren Setari and member of the original First Squad, killed by massive.

Michael Devlin (m) - Cassandra’s father.

Naranezolen (m) - Head of House Zolen.

Nenna Lents (f) - Daughter of Orren and Ketta Lents.

Nick Dale (m) - Sue Dale’s stepson.

Noriko Yamada (f) - A friend of Cassandra’s from Agowla.

Nona Maersk (f) - Aide to the Lahanti of Unara.

Palan Leoda (f) - Wednesday Addams, junior reporter.

Paran Ruuel (m) - Kaoren Ruuel’s father. A mathematician.

Peresadestar (m) - Head of House Destar, ruling family of Nuriath.

Perrin Drake (m) - KOTIS security detail – weapons trainer.

Purda (f) - A Solarian stray advising at Pandora.

Roke Hetz (m) - KOTIS security detail.

Rye (m) - A Nuran orphan, formerly belonging to House Renar.

Se-Ahn Surat (f) - An actress who plays Caszandra Devlin on The Hidden War.

Sebreth Tanay (f) - Lahanti (mayor) of Unara.

Senere Amallay (m) - Taren Setari and member of the original Second Squad, killed by massive.

Sentarestel (f) - A Nuran orphan, given to the care of House Renar, and the daily care of Ys and Rye.

Shon Notra (m) - Grandson of Istsen Notra.

Siame Ruuel (f) - Kaoren Ruuel’s younger sister. A Kalrani.

Sue Dale (f) - Cassandra’s Aunt.

Suzlein Dor (m) - Taren Setari and member of the original First Squad, killed by massive.

Teor Ruuel (f) - Kaoren Ruuel’s mother. A sculptor.

Torenaltelasker (m) - One of the potential heirs of House Telasker, the ruling house of Nuri.

Truss Estey (f) - Administrator in charge of the Pandoran talent school.

Tsa Orren Lents (m) - An anthropologist working part-time with KOTIS.

Tsaile Nura Staben (f) - Overarching Commander of Muina settlement forces.

Tsana Dura (f) - A teaching program.

Tsana Ridel (m) - A teaching program.

Tsel Onara (f) - Captain of the Diodel.

Tsen Neen Helada (f) - KOTIS officer in charge of the Arenrhon site.

Tsen Rote Sloe (m) - KOTIS officer in charge of Kalasa site.

Tsur Gidds Selkie (m) - Senior coordinator and trainer of Setari. Sight Sight talent.

Voiz Euka (m) - A KOTIS technician who created an Earth clock and calendar.

Ys (f) - A Nuran orphan, formerly belonging to House Renar.

Zelekodar (f) - A Nuran orphan.

1

Taren spelling continues to confuse – Maze pronounced 'Ruuel' as 'Rue-el'.

2

I can’t believe I just wrote that.

3

I was also more than a little relieved to know that KOTIS wasn’t blocking my emails, which had occurred to me more than once.

4

Well, they didn’t say it in those words, exactly.

5

I’m collecting his smiles. I’ve built a little image gallery out of my log. A very small gallery.

6

Which means Fifth will be here soon, but I guess I’ll survive. Twelfth will go just after the signing ceremony and be replaced by Sixth, and then Third will be replaced by Seventh, Second by Eighth and so on. First and Fourth are the long-term Muinan assignment for the moment, mainly for the cause of keeping me somewhere it seems the Nurans can’t go.

7

At least, I’m fairly sure that’s what he said.

8

So irrelevant to me now, but I’d studied for them!

9

I’m getting better at not picturing them having sex, but I’m always going to be aware that there’s history there.

Content

Höst Andrea K. The Touchstone Trilogy

Author’s Note

Stray

Description

November

December

January

February

March

Lab Rat One

Description

April

May

June

July

Caszandra

Description

July

August

September

October

November Again

Glossary

Character List – Setari (Original)

Character List – Setari (Later)

Character List - Other

1